NOTES AND QUERIES

January, 1969

in song and verse. The tale's the thing.1 Although some fifteen years ago Francis P. Magoun made clear the presence of oral 2 in Old alTVO. 3 of Volume 51 of The Journal of the formulaehis article English verse, and by x though has been followed ^ Friends' Historical Society (1967) con- several others3 which supplement and extend tains an interesting address by Charles F. Carter, President of the Society, on " Un- our knowledge of formulaic elements in Old settled Friends". Mr. Carter suggests that English, attempts to progress from the in the later seventeenth century Quaker verbal level to the level of narrative have Meetings were accepting some of the stan- had less success than might have been dards of the 1662 Act of Settlement as hoped. The intermediate stage of conventional guidance in giving charity to Friends; and that " some practical hard 'bargaining " re- scenes has attracted some attention. In a 4 sulted " about where the membership came recent article in Neophilologus Donald K. to rest". " The Removeal of poor friends Fry sums up earlier work on the subject of from one place to another " and the issue " themes and type-scenes ", and indicates of certificates for those desiring to move the confusion present even in nomenclature. were a consequence of this attitude. An However, at the end his definition of a article by Douglas G. Lister, " Shorthand as theme can only be: a Seventeenth-Century Quaker Tool" sura recurring concatenation of details and veys the use of early shorthand systems by ideas, not restricted 'by a specific event, Friends. There are also articles by Alfred verbatim repetition, or certain formulas, W. Braithwaite on " George Fox's Last Imwhich forms an underlying structure for prisonment" in 1673-5, by William H. an action or description, Marwick on " The Glasgow Study Circle " a definition which, though judicious, consists between the two World Wars, and a list of largely of stating what we are not entitled " Meeting Houses and Meetings Settled" to look for. Of course, examples of the between 1688 and 1791, compiled by David kind of concatenation meant have been M. Butler. CHRISTOPHER HILL. given, from Lord's own " arming of the hero", (Singer, pp. 87-91), 3 to Crowne's A Blackmore Society is 'being founded, " the hero on the beach ", Greenfield's 6 on the occasion of the centenary of Lorna " exile ", and the " beasts of battle " studied by Magoun and Adrien Bonjour.7 But even Doone (1869). Details from 24 Linhope Street, Clarence Gate, London, N.W.I. 1

Memorabilia

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

The February issue will be principally concerned with the early nineteenth century.

Notes
THE FAIRY-TALE STRUCTURE OF "BEOWULF" TN his book The Singer of Tales A. B. Lord makes a statement which, though undeniably true, has since proved a stumblingblock to many applications of the oralformulaic theory of composition, especially in the field of Old English studies. He writes: Formulas and groups of formulas, both large and small, Serve only one purpose. They provide a means for telling a story

Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, XXIV) 1960, referred to hereafter as Singer. The quotation forms the first paragraph of ch. iv, " The Theme ", p. 68. 2 Francis P. Magoun Jr., " The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry", Speculum, xxviii (1953), pp. 446-67. 3 Three important ones are: Robert E. Diamond, " The Diction of the Signed Poems of Cynewulf ", P.Q., xxxviii (1958), pp. 228-41: Robert P. Creed, " The Making of an Anglo-Saxon Poem ", E.L.H., xxvi (1959), pp. 445-55: Jackson J. Campbell, " Oral Poetry in the Seafarer", Speculum, xxxv (1960), pp. 87-96. 4 Donald K. Fry, " Old English Formulaic Themes and Type-Scenes", Neophilologus, lii (1968), pp. 48-54. 5 David Crowne, " T h e Hero on the Beach: an Example of Composition by Theme in AngloSaxon Poetry", Neuphilologische Milteilungen, lxi (1960), pp. 362-72. 'Stanley B. Greenfield, "Formulaic Expression of the Theme of Exile in Anglo-Saxon Poetry", Speculum, xxx (1955), pp. 200-206. 7 Francis P. Magoun, " The Theme of the Beasts of Battle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry ", M.P., lvi (1955), pp. 81-90, and Adrien Bonjour, "Beowulf and the

January, 1969

NOTES AND QUERIES

these studies have their limitations. Clearly lated into English,10 its methods have no narrative could be composed by merely seemed more suitable to anthropologists11 assembling meditative or descriptive scenes or to students of African material12 than to of this kind. Some other force must come those concerned with Old English. Yet the into operation, using " themes and type- very title of the work indicates that it has scenes " in the same way as the themes some bearing on our problem. themselves use verbal formulae, flexibly, Propp's first, and basic point is that it is allowing great variation, but still helping the a mistake to try to analyse fairy-tales, or singeror writer-by limiting an otherwise folk-tales, from the standpoint of motifs, as unmanageable number of decisions. It is has been done most determinedly by the noteworthy that Lord himself has labelled school of Aantti Aarne. The tales change this force " a tension of essences ", (Singer, their characters and settings too easily. If p. 97), and has attempted to elaborate the two similar tales are told with, in one veridea by describing the events surrounding sion, a bear as the villain, and, in another, the voyages of Beowulf and Odysseus.8 The the Devil, are we then entitled to call them attempt is not wholly successful, primarily, different stories? Or if it is agreed that the one feels, because the two series are in fact two are similar, how are we to take the too closely parallel, leaving little room for many stories which involve, e.g. a king givthat variation, not on a memorized original, ing an eagle to a hero, a sorcerer giving a but on an unconscious pattern, which little boat to Ivan, an old man giving a horse characterizes all levels of formulaic compo- to Sucenko, the gift, in each case, carrying sition, verbal, scenic, or narrative. the recipient off to another kingdom? Admittedly it is not surprising that we Everyone can recognize that there is somehave been able to discover little of the pat- thing similar about these parts of a story, terns of Old English narrative, in view of tout any conventional classification finds it the paucity of our sources. A certain hard to express the common ingredients and amount canfoedone by paralleling minor degree of common relationship. This, Propp pieces, as R. W. V. Elliott does with Maldon insists, is why we need a " morphology ", and the Hildebrandslied;' but, leaving aside a scheme which concerns itself with the the religious works, the main target can only limits of a form rather than with individual be Beowulf. It is the purpose of this paper examples; and his insistence surely reflects to suggest that critics of Old English can the situation in the study of themes in usefully borrow a method of description formulaic epics, where there are persistent, from another field of study, where materials nagging similarities, but where there is no are much more numerous, and can then possibility of defining one single " conapply it successfully to Beowulf, with results catenation of ideas " or of explaining what which, firstly, give some idea of the un- it is that holds them together, and where, known sources of the epic, and secondly, moreover, the very attempt to do this inhelp us to see something of the unconscious volves the risk of falling into what Lord conditioning of the poet's mind, and of his {Singer, p. 101) called " our greatest error ", i.e. " to attempt to make ' scientifically' predecessors', on the level of narrative. rigid a phenomenon that isfluid". The 'basic work to which I wish to refer As soon as he begins to set out his scheme is a long article by a Russian scholar, Vladimir Propp, first published in 1928 and of analysis Propp makes it clear that he is called Morfologija Skazki, "The Mor- not going to be trapped in that way. He phology of the Folk-tale". Though this rejects the tempting clarity of the characters, study has attracted a certain amount of 10 Vladimir attention in the West, and has been trans- Folk-tale", ed. Propp, " The MorphologyL.of the S. Pirkova Jacobsen, trans. Scott, Beasts of Battle", P.M.L.A., Ixii (1957), pp. 563- Int. Journal of American Linguistics, xxiv (1958),
8

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

Mediaeval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis P. Magoun Jr., edd. Jess B. Bessinger Jr. and Robert P. Creed, London 1965 (published in New York 1965 as Franciplegius), pp. 86-92. Ralph W. V. Elliott, " Byrhtnoth and Hildebrand: a Study in Heroic Technique ", Comp. Lit., . xiv (1962), pp. 53-70.

Albert B. Lord, " Beowulf and Odysseus",

No. 4. part in. This translation has been used throughout. 11 See C. Levi-Strauss, Anthropologie Structural, Paris 1958, pp. 227-55, where the story of Oedipus is treated in a " mythemic " way, though Propp is not cited. 12 Jan Vansina, De la Tradition Orale, Tervuren 1961. Propp is cited on p. 56, in the explanation of a Burundi story.

NOTES AND QUERIES

the " dramatis personae" themselves, for their very ease of definition makes it a simple matter for any narrator to replace one figure by another. He stresses also that even actions are not significant in themselves, tout only in their context, resisting the temptation to pull out " plums" of individual occurrences, as, perhaps, Old English scholars have not done. The real 'basis of his scheme is " the functions of the dramatis personae ", what the characters actually perform, expressed for the most part by abstract nouns.13 These acquire stability only in sequence, showing the folk-tale to be essentially an indivisible unit, a waveform denned by real but indivisible forces, not a construction consisting of units to be added or subtracted. As a result, the best way of defining " functions " is to list them in order, or to use them to look at examples, as Propp does with the first hundred tales of Afanasev's Russian collection. But before they are listed, and before they are then applied, as an example, to Beowulf, it may be as well to mention briefly the conclusions which Propp draws from his study. They are: 1. " Functions serve as stable, constant elements in folk-tales, independent of who performs them, and how they are fulfilled by the dramatis personae. They constitute the components of a folk-tale." 2. " The number of functions known in the fairy-tale is limited." (About thirty.) 3. " The sequence of functions is always identical" (though some functions may be missed out). And therefore: 4. " All fairy-tales, by their structure, belong to one and the same type." The last conclusion especially seems amazing. But it is not dissimilar to the claim of the oral-formulaic theorist, that no song is the property of any man, and that all oral epics in the same language belong, by their technique, to one and the same type. In this way also " functions " seem to relate to the narratives of oral tales, and I would suggest of oral epics, very much as oral formulae do to the half-lines or hexameters of those epics.
One might note here the difficulty which M. Rychner, has, and which Donald K. Fry mentions in the article cited, in defining the " motif ". M. Rychner also goes so far as to use at least one abstraction, " ingratitude royale", corresponding perhaps to parts of Propp's " function" O, unrecognized return of the hero.
13

January, 1969

The " functions" of the Russian fairytale can, then, be listed in the following order, with the appropriate sigla attached to them by Propp. (It should be remembered that this paragraph is a summary of some 36 pages in the original study, without examples, and with no mention of some complicating factors.) The story begins with an introduction to the members of a family (a), one of whose members is absent (j3). An interdiction is placed on the hero iy), which he violates (8); or else an order is given and carried out (y & again). The villain then appears (e), gets information about his victim (0, and attempts to deceive him (/). The victim unwittingly helps his enemy (0). The villain then begins the main action by injuring some member of the family (A).11 The hero is then informed (B), decides to help (C), and sets out ( t ) . He then meets another character, the " donor " who tests him, talks to him or attacks him (D), in a series of events designed to lead up to the production of a magical agent. The hero reacts, favourably or unfavourably, rightly or wrongly (E), and gains, or fails to gain, magical assistance (F).15 The hero somehow reaches his object of search (G), and struggles with the villain (H). The hero is marked (J), but the villain is defeated (I), and the original harm is undone (K). The hero returns ( I ) , but is pursued (Pr) and rescued (Rs). There the story may stop; or it may begin again, with a new action, perhaps consequent on the unrecognized arrival home (O). A further half-dozen " functions " are listed, covering such matters as the possible recognition of the hero, (see J), the replacement of a fight with the villain by the carrying out of a difficult task, and the complications caused by having a false hero as well as a true one. But the permutations of these do not need totoedealt with. The nature of the " functions " should toe reasonably clear already, and it should also be apparent that a framework of this type, though limiting, still allows very great variation of characters and settings at every stage, permitting any story-teller free scope
14 This is one possible start. Another (a) occurs when a member of the family feels some overpowering need, hunger, thirst, love, etc. The action then continues in the same way. There are two or three other alternative lines of development, which have been omitted. 15 Propp shows that D, E, F are in fart a sequence, and that to accept one form of D is, naturally, to rule out several variants of E and F.

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

January, 1969

NOTES AND QUERIES Bear's Son in its many forms. Still, Propp's explanation, with its curious similarity to the principles of oral-formulaic composition, does help us to recognize how even The Bear's Son could last, as a recognizable story, for so long and over so great an area. Moreover, the " functional " structure casts light on some anomalous features which do not emerge from Panzer. I propose, therefore, to set out a description of Beowulf in Propp's sigla, which, though as yet unclear, may at least make more vivid the complexity of the plot and suggest that we are not dealing with a chance accretion of motifs; and then to relate these letters to the actions for which they stand.
Gs G3
1 D 2 E2 neg. [Fj H> I [R] G' \

for skill and invention, a liberty of which, one might add, Afanasev's tales make good use. It remains to apply the scheme of the " functions " to Beowulf. In doing this, it seems that one goes through three stages. Firstly, admiring the elegance of Propp's solution of the structural problem, one might consider that a system of the kind he indicates would toe valuable, though a different system of actions would need to toe worked out, perhaps by comparison with such other Old English material as we have, in the same way as has been done for verbal formulae. Secondly, some of the particular motifs cited by Propp toegin to look familiar. r D 2 E 2 pos. B C f 1 D 2 E 2 pos.
3

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

y" 8 A

14

Y?

A"[Pr 4 ? Rs 8 T B 1 C f A 18 Bs C f

U> E pos.
F? G s

F 1 H 1 I 1 K4 H 1 I 1 K4

neg.

Thus, he comments on the strange prosperity which often serves as a prelude and a cause of the first misfortune, and one thinks of the early luck of Hrothgar:
I>a waes Hroj'gare heresped gyfen, wiges weorSmynd, pset him his winemagas georne hyrdon, o8S ("set seo geogoS geweox, magodriht micel. (64-7)16

Only as a third stag'e does one come to realize that in fact the whole of Beowulf can be set out in the sigla of the " functions ", in the right sequence, and without selection of particular incidents. Yet this appears to be so. It is true that all the " disgressive " material and all the elegiac or moralistic material remains uncovered, so that no justice is done to the poem's thematic complexity; tout it can stilltoesaid that, in spite of its vast geographical and historical distance from the Russian tales, Beowulf, by its structure, 'belongs to their type. At this stage one could argue that by reading Propp one does no more, indeed rather less, than by reading Friedrich Panzer,17 who demonstrated long ago the resemblance of Beowulf to a particular fairy-tale, that of The
18 All quotations and line-numbers are from Beowulf, ed. Fr. Klaeber, 3rd edition, Boston 1950. 17 Friedrich Panzer, Studien zur germanischen Sagengeschichte, I " Beowulf ", Munich 1910.

(The numbers by some of the letters are those used by Propp to indicate particular motifs, though he agrees that these are unstable and cantoemultiplied almost indefinitely; the boxes show apparent " transference " of functions.) To go through the description: in the Greek letters at the start, one sees three of the seven possible " functions' of the fairytale's introductory action. P is the function of " absence ". The parents are at work, the king goes off to fight or the merchant to trade, and while they are absent, harm falls on their families. A normal development is " absence and death ". It is characteristic of the fairy-tale to have a widow's son as a hero, or else a child who has only a stepmother. Is this what we have in the Scyld episode? For not only does this describe a funeral, it also stresses physical departure in the drifting out of the tooat, {lines 48-9), so that a sense of loss and abandonment hangs over the poem from then on. Early complaints of the irrelevancy of the passage1* at least indicate its peculiarity. And the convincing statement of its artistic and symbolic links with the rest of the poem,

11 Henry Bradley, article on Beowulf in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. Ill, 1910, pp. 758-61, also cited by Bonjour below.

NOTES AND QUERIES

by Adrien Bonjour,1* perhaps makes it even stranger. For the extraordinary obliquity of the approach to the main action, beginning with a dead king, tracing out his descendants, flashing for a moment to the monster that haunts one of them, and only then bringing in a (for the moment nameless) hero, makes even Virgil appear almost unsophisticated. Could this complexity be the result of invention alone, with no model of any kind? It is at least possible that though the poet makes good use of the fact that this is Scyld who is dispatched, founder of an ill-fated dynasty, he in fact began with the need for a departure of any kind, and only then hit on the brilliant idea of choosing someone more useful thematically than Beowulf's fatherthough he, Ecgtheow, is mentioned three times, and we are told that he is dead. y and 8 stand for an interdiction and its breach; or else for an order and its carrying out. Again one of the characteristic elements in fairy-tales is the giving of apparently purposeless orders, and the automatically disastrous responses. One rarely know why the servant should not look in the king's dish, or why the mother must be 'buried under the juniper-tree, and probably no reason is ever given. But whether the order is " Do this " or " Do not do that", one knows that some action will be taken, and that it will come to no immediate good. In Beowulf the strange order is of course Hrothgar's sudden decision to build a hall, duly carried out by his subjects, and coming immediately after the statement of his greatest prosperity, (lines 64-79). No reason is ever given for this. Admittedly the idea is not unreasonable; but it has not 'been sufficiently remarked that it is this order which precipitates the whole action. Grendel's hostility is aroused by Heorot, and, as far as we know, by Heorot alone. The poet gives, perhaps, two hints at a reason, one in the very faint suggestion of Hrothgar's pride in lines 6970, and one in the beautiful passage of the minstrel's song of Creation in lines 90-98, where an elemental opposition seems to be set up between the world of the hall and the lurking monster in the darkness. But this could again 'be a brilliant afterthought
" A d r i e n Bonjour, The Digressions in Beowulf (Medium Aevum Monographs No. V), Oxford 1950, pp. 1-11.

January, 1969

or reworking, glossing over the essential irrelevancy of the fairy-tale. The " functions " surrounding the villain's first reconaissance are then missed out, for Beowulf goes straight on to the first overt action, the " act of villainy" (A) which begins the story proper. Grendel's killing of the thirty thanes is in one way atypical of the fairy-tale 20 in most examples begun for by a hostile act there is a stress on theft rather than murder. The villain carries off something or somebody, who has to be sought out and recovered, and if anyone is killed, as Propp remarks, it is " usually a component of other kinds of villainous acts or crimes, and serves to intensify them". Murder, on the other hand, receives gruesome emphasis in Beowulf, with the simple motive of cannibalism, and there is no suggestion that the dead thanes will be recovered. Still, it is the more striking that, as the story is retold by Beowulf to Hygelac in lines 2069-2100, the hero speaks of the mysterious glof of Grendel, in which victims are carried off. It has been noticed before81 that the troll's glove is a folk-tale property, and, though the poet uses it only to enliven a thrice-told tale, it may be that there is at least some hint of a version in which the basis of the action was kidnapping rather than murder, even though the grave and rationalistic leanings of epic poetry have transformed desire for profit on both sides into simple hatred on the one, and a noble desire for glory and revenge on the other. " Functions" B, C, and t , are of less interest, covering the informing of the hero, his response and departure, lines 194-228 of the poem. The only faintly curious feature, apart from the remarkable postponing of the hero's entry, is the double mention of the snotere ceorlas in lines 202 and 416, who do not object to Beowulfs journey. Should they object? If not, it seems a slightly roundabout way of expressing the hero's popularity, and may reflect either the parental blessing given to the adventurer, or, more possibly, parental disapproval, which the poet knows of, but feels obliged to refute, rather like his hero's inglorious youth."
20 Stories can also be begun by a " need ", see fn. 14. In that case the hero's motive is even more clearly t o gain something, rather than to regain it. 21 E . D . Laborde, " Grendel's Glove and his Immunity from W e a p o n s " , MJLJi., xviii (1923), pp. 202-4. " Mentioned in lines 2183-88, a tantalizing

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

January, 1969

NOTES AND QUERIES

the story of Breca and so gives us " confidence in Beowulf's ability to cope with the fearful monster ";" R. W. Chambers points out that, as a wicked counsellor, Unferth could 25 toe a stock-figure in the Scylding story; Morton W. Bloomfield says that he is a character emblematic of Discord and so cannot help buttoeimpolite." Any of these theories is acceptable so far. But we go on to observe what appears to be a total dichotomy in Unferth's character which is extremely hard to explain psychologically or emblematically. After the Grendel fight he is referred to unflatteringly in lines 98084, and in the hypermetric lines 1162-68 is unmistakably connected with the theme of murder between near-kin, of which Beowulf has already accused him flatly. Then, as Beowulf prepares to dive into the monsters' lake, Unferth suddenly leaves his normal disagreeable nature to lend the hero his sword Hrunting, to which the poet refers with definite favour, ntes past ponne msetost msegenfultuma. This digression in fact takes up a further seventeen lines (1455-71) at a crucial moment, and without any of the immediate thematic relevance that we see, for example, in Wiglaf's sword, Eanmundes laf (2611-25). Why should Unferth so strangely change his tune? And why should Hrunting attain such importance when, after all, it fails to bite on the ogress, a service which could have been fulfilled toy a common sword, or even, as happens later, by Beowulf's own Naegling? Not that Hrunting is forgotten even then, for Beowulf mentions it in his recital to Hrothgar (165960), and we have what seems totoethe return of the sword to Unferth some 250 lines later." There has been, so far, little com24 Beowulf, ed. Klaeber, p . 148, cited also b y Bonjour, Digressions, p . 2 2 . 25 R . W . C h a m b e r s , Beowulf: an Introduction, 3rd edition with supplement by C . L . Wrenn, C a m bridge 1959, p . 2 7 . 28 Morton W . Bloomfield, " Beowulf and Christian Allegory: a n Interpretation of U n f e r t h " , Traditio, vii (1949-51), p p . 410-15. T h e article claims t o b e concerned only with Unferth a s h e a p p e a r s in t h e p o e m ; n o mention is m a d e of t he scene in which t h e sword Hrunting, " symbol of his m i g h t " , appears t o b e handed back t o Unferth o r " Discord " . 27 Lines 1807-12. This is a difficult passages, t h e question being whether Beowulf return t he sword t o Unferth, or whether Unferth h a n d s over t h e sword a s a gift t o Beowulf. Klaeber prefers t h e latter, though it involves a very abrupt change of subject, not only in line 1809 b u t also in line 1806. It also implies that H r u n t i n g had a t some time o n

So far, though there has been nothing that cannot be explained in " functional" terms, there has also been nothing generally agreed totoeinexplicable in any other way. But we come, after this, to a long section of the poem containing several features which still demand an explanation in terms of narrative. To toegin with, there is the approach of the hero to his field of tattle, again strangely long drawn-out. Beowulf is challenged, first toy the coastguard (lines 237-57), then by Wulfgar the herald (33339), and finally recognized by Hrothgar himself (372-89). In every encounter he answers politely, and in the first two he receives guidance to Hrothgar and Heorot itself. These passages of dialogue and description could quickly 'become tedious, as Beowulf is challenged twice in rather similar terms, introduces himself twice, and is twice discussed, with his father, by Hrothgar. It is even possible that the poet realized this and tried to palliate it by the gradual unfolding of Ecgtheow's career, by the delay over the hero's name, and the comparatively short response to Wulfgar. But still, what are all these passages for? They have no very clear use in the poem, and occupy more than 250 lines (229-490)." Even more in need of an explanation is the often-mentioned challenge delivered by Unferth the pyle and replied to by Beowulf, which takes up a further hundred lines (499606). It seems at first sight totoeunjustifiably arrogant, and this in itself has produced several diverse theories. Bonjour and Klaeber suggest, with, as in the Scyld episode, a certain reliance on psychological complexity, that the challenge leads up to
reference in itself, but long since recognized to have a connection with the traditional laziness or clumsiness of the Bear's Son. This is as good an example as any of the way in which the poet can be aware of folk-tale material and feel bound to include some of it, while apparently trying to suppress what he considers t o be unfitting. 23 Robert E. Diamond, " Themes and Ornament in Anglo-Saxon Poetry", P.M.LA., Ixxvi (1961), pp. 461-68. This article sees the problem in suggesting that the " ceremonious greetings and reception of strangers in Beowulf (so strongly reminiscent of The Odyssey) seem to be a subtheme of the greater theme of court scenes", while the coastguard is made a subtheme of the sea-voyage. However, division into themes and subthemes still leaves the problem of correlating themes into a narrative ; it is better to tackle the narrative as a whole. This is not to deny that the challenges of the folk-tale have been made more courteous!

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

NOTES AND QUERIES

January, 1969

ment on the importance of the sword, and with regard to Unferth, few critics have gone any further than to suggest, as K. Sisam does,28 that the " generous loan and return " is an instance of " magnanimity on both sides ". Yet there are strong suggestions that the poet does not intend us to approve of Unferth in any way, for he takes the trouble to remark ironically, in line 980, pa wses swigra secg sunu Ecglafes, and to repeat the charge of early boastfulness and later cowardice in lines 1465-71:
Huru ne gemunde mago Ecglafes eafopes craeftig, pst he ser gespraec wine druncen.

adding, lest anyone should take this as an example of " forgetting and forgiving ", the overtly critical pxr he dome forleas, ellenmxrpum. I labour these points concerning Unferth because they provide the best example of a character and a series of incidents which have no clear explanation as they stand, and which therefore force us to consider the poet's and his audience's ideas of narrative. What would we expect to find if we continued to analyse Beowulf in the terms of the " functions", after the setting out of the hero (lines 205-28)? We should see the most characteristic feature of the folk-tale, the series of " functions" D, E, F, G. Heroes of folk-tales rarely succeed without magical help; if it were possible to do without it, the action would quickly seem thin. But the means by which the hero acquires help lend themselves to variation more readily than anything else, and are especially liable to the phenomenon of " inadvertency ". The hero may be tested, or questioned, or attacked, but the attitude of his opponent does not make much difference. An animal or spirit may 'be friendly if it is helped; but help may also come from a villain who " accidentally " drops or gives away something of magical power. To give a familiar example, in Jack and the Beanthe previous evening been returned to Unferth without comment by the poet; and if Beowulf is to keep it it is strange that he is using another named weapon. Naegling, in line 2680. I prefer to take suna (dat.) for sunu, and Isen (loan) for lean (gift), as indeed Klaeber suggests himself. The subject then remains the same from line 1805 to line 1812, Beowulf returning the sword, thanking Unferth for it, and praising it. The balance of magnanimity then remains clearly on his side, except for the incident of the loan. 28 K. Sisam. The Structure of Beowulf, Oxford 1965, pp. 14, 41.

stalk, Jack meets the pedlar or the butcher who gives him a handful of beans for his cow. This is almost always represented as a proof of Jack's stupidity, his being gulled by an enemy. But of course the beans are the gateway to the giant's castle and riches. Does the wicked tradesman realize this? Where did he get the beans from? We never ask or answer these questions in practice.29 It is enough that the magical property is transferred to the hero, often with guidance. Is this series not recognizable in the sequence of events in Beowulf leading up to Heorot and Unferth? Though Wulfgar and the coastguard are not by any means supernatural, they do accost Beowulf, at times with a hint of menace,30 they are mollified by his answers and appearance, and they do as a result clear his path to the king's seat in Heorot. These actions could well be represented as D, E, G (positive). The order is reversed for Hrothgar, as Beowulf speaks first, and the king perhaps remains neutral until after Unferth's challenge. Unferth, as in several folk-tales,31 obliges the hero to prove himself in a way opposite to his earlier behaviour, overpowering an assailant with insult and roughness instead of courtesy, i.e. D, E negative. And then, strikingly, this new challenger provides the only element still missing, F, the magic property which should help the hero; moreover, he does it " inadvertently " , contrary to his own apparent nature. Of course Hrunting is " transferred" to the second " move " of the story and plays no part in the fight with Grendel. However, it is not uncommon for a hero to reach partial success by his own efforts, only to find himself in need of something else to succeed fully, as the Brothers find in Comus. Again, Hrunting is in the end useless, even if still treated with odd consideration. It is worth noting here its description
29 T h o u g h in A n d r e w Lang's Victorian version in The Red Fairy Book (1890), b o t h these matters are resolved by t h e overt mediation of a fairy whose moralizings on th e subject of J a c k ' s lack of respect t o his m o t h e r suggest, however, a certain modernity. 30 E.g. lines 256-7, ofost is selest to gecySanne, hwanan eov/re cyme syndon. 31 Strange reversals of a n y kind a r e c o m m o n , one of t h e charms of t h e fairy-tale being its habit of surprise. O n e could look a t t h e G r i m m s ' Marchen Von einem, der auszog das Fiirchten zu lernen, where t h e h e r o asks even monsters t o get warm a t his fire, b u t beats o r kills t h em at t h e first sign of unsociability.

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

January, 1969

NOTES AND QUERIES should still remember that in some places Beowulf is less than a miracle of construction in our terms. Its excellence, after all, does lie in the area of some other formulaic epics, perhaps in what Gilbert Murray called the " genius of attitude " of the Iliad and Odyssey." Moreover, as so often with traditional compositions, when it does reach an effect of particular subtlety, such as the Scyld prologue, this can partly be explained as a virtue of the genus rather than the individual, the technique rather than the example, especially as, we must remember, the technique itself allows and encourages variation on the basic pattern. Having said so much, it remains only to look at the points of interest in the remaining sigla. H and I represent the struggle with and victory over Grendel, here a simple fight rather than a test or an impossible demand. Victory ought to be followed by K, achievement of the object of search, liquidation of the original lack or misfortune. In fact, as has been said, this cannot happen in Beowulf except in so far as revenge is a compensation for injury, and even this is partially put off till the second fight is over. It is striking that Beowulf does then return to Hrothgar with something, namely Grendel's head and the hilt of the giant's sword, and we are also told that he had the opportunity to take more, in lines 1612-15. The head especially, though it may seem a natural enough trophy, recalls the " layings " of ghosts by decapitation, and makes the adventure under the lake more essential than Hrothgar seems to think immediately after Grendel's flight; as perhaps an AngloSaxon audience would dimly have sensed. G6 represents a particularly good example of the usetoya skilled narrator of conventional patterns, to round off one section and lead into another. It stands for " guidance (by following bloody tracks)", a common motif, and refers to lines 837-924, section XIII of the manuscript. In this some of Hrothgar's companions follow Grendel's trail to the mere and ride back singing Beowulf's praises. It is obvious that this section could be omitted almost without any gap being visible, as only the last few lines from -Da wses morgenleoht on are necessary links between the setting down of Grendel's arm and the speech of praise by Hrothgar.
35 Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, Oxford 1907, esp. pp. 209-31.

as a hxft-mece, a word only used in Old English of this sword, and, as R. W. Chambers pointed out,32 perhaps to be connected with the Old Icelandic nonce-word hepti-sax, used only in the analogous situation of Grettir's fight with the giant in the waterfall-cave. This survival might imply that Hrunting once had a considerable importance, though its functions here, both of killing the immediate enemy and striking the final blow to the dead one, have been taken over by the giant's sword on the wall, as happens also in Icelandic analogues. One can only say that Beowulf in the nidsele is provided with almost a superfluity of magic aids, including the ray of light like the sun (lines 1570-2), which, in similar stories, paralyses or disturbs the ogress at the crucial moment." Possibly several versions have at some time been conflated, and there would be no advantage in searching for an " original" version, since, as has been said, individual elements can be changed easily by any inventive narrator. The important point is this. The writer of our poem may very well have been a literate artist, and not just a scribe. Still, he was clearly acquainted with and affected by the techniques of formulaic composition at a verbal level. From the example above it seems that he was also affected, in some way, by an unconscious, variable pattern on a narrative level. Certainly he was trying, deliberately and consciously, to write a poem containing many reflections on the themes of feud and kingship and the heroic life, and equally certainly he succeeded. But even when it would have 'been to his advantage to do so, for example by explaining the ill-fate of Heorot or removing the incident of Unferth's loan, he could not entirely shake off the structure of his sources or models, any more than he could begin to compose in a poetic diction all of his own. So, though one can agree to some extent with Larry D. Benson" when he writes that Beowulf has " qualities contrary to what oral composition .might lead us to expect", and indicates the " sophistication of its diction and structure", one
32 R. W. Chambers, Introduction, pp. 472-5. [cf. G. Vigfusson and F . York Powell, lcel. Prose

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

Reader, 1879, p . 404. E D D . ] 33 R. W . Chambers , Introduction, p p . 466-8. 34 Larry D . Benson, " The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative P o e t r y " , P.M.L.A., Ixxxi (1966), p p . 334-41.

10

NOTES AND QUERIES

January, 1969

K. Sisam has commented on this, indicating it as an example of parallel narration;3' and no doubt one should admire tooth the way in which the poet works in his important legendary digressions, as well as the circular, " enveloping " motion which, as with Wealhtheow's actions in lines 611-41, relieves us after a period of tension. Still, the section remains " functional" in two or three ways. Firstly, though Beowulf has been guided so fartoythe coastguard and Wulfgar, he has still not reached his final goal, the monsters' den, and so has to receive the indirect guidance of Grendel's trail. Moreover, it is very common in fairytales for the hero, having escaped with his object of search, totoepursued toy the villain, or, as Propp notes, toy the villain's female relations. So, though the attack of Grendel's mother serves mainly as a second act of hostility (A), beginning a second " move ", it is also characteristic that this should arise from a kind of pursuit, the ogress actually following people who have been to her lair. The letters Pr represent this " function", -while Rs indicates that Beowulf is rescued, not by any magic power, but by 'being absent, as the poet tells us in lines 1299-1301. These critics who have suggested that at some time there was no day's delay between the two fights" may well have some truth; still, the point is that our poet, or some predecessor of his, has used an effective, tout still traditional series of incidents to gain the pause he required. Perhaps significantly,38 there is little in the second and third episodes that requires further elaboration, and no extra " functional " sigla appear in the description of them. Thefightwith Grendel's mother follows a pattern similar to that of the fight with Grendel, and is connected with it as hastoeenexplained. Nor is the dragon fight very far different. The absence at the start is that of "the rightful king", for tooth Hygelac and Heardred are dead, the dragon is provoked and answers in a normal way, while the hero is guided to it, fights it, and wins treasure equally conventionally. The only dubious features are that there is nothing useful totoegainedtoythe hero, F,
K . Sisam, Structure, p p . 28-32. R . W. C h a m b e r s , Introduction, p p . 64-5. See G . V . Smithers' Inaugural Lecture, The Making of Beowulf, D u r h a m 1961. where it is also suggested, from a study of t h e Icelandic analogues, t h a t t h e three parts of Beowulf, including t h e dragon-fight, follow a similar pattern.
37 38 38

except perhaps his iron shield, and that there is a general thinness to the action, which is enriched by many allusive references to the Swedes, but which contains few characters except Beowulf and Wiglaf. There is no victorious homecoming at the end, either. In contrast to the vast majority of fairy-tales, which end with the hero's marriage and prosperity, Beowulf leaves us with the hero's death, his failure to return, J. negative. Nevertheless, this is in a way not a difficult change to make, and it is still important that even in the dragon-fight there is a recognizable " functional" structure with no extraneous elements, and one quite close to the two that have gone before. What can be concluded from this kind of exposition? After all, to analyse Beowulf in Propp's terms is of little help for literary critics, while that there is a fairy-tale element in the poem has been admitted at least since the study of Panzer. To begin with, the technique seems valuable in showing a kind of formulaic, controlled structure in the poem's narrative. Moreover, the sequence of " functions " seems to explain well the mysterious Scyld episode, the fabulous prosperity of Hrothgar, and the whole subtle, indirect, delaying approach to the main action, as well as clearing up the puzzle of Unferth's perversity of character and several other minor points. And in addition, we learn from the gaps in the structure as well as from those that happen to be filled. Propp's analysis, bringing a clearer understanding of the nature of folk-tales than could be gained from analysis of any one type, does remind us that fairy-tales are not adventures enriched and complicated by magic, but stories about magic, with their illogical and " inadvertent " nature always a part of them, not a corruption. So, one insight that we gain into Beowulf is that it is this magical element that .the poet likes least, for he can be seen, not only disguising his hero's bear-nature" and converting waterfall-caves into submarine halls,40 but also trying to blot out the typical features of the magical object of search and the magic property that helps in the search. The poet's Christianity may have something to do with this rationalization; but it seems more likely to come from the fact that he is an epic and elegiac poet, concerned above all with human problems and tragedies, wanting no fantasy to degrade his
38 40

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012

R. W. Chambers, Introduction, pp. 365-81. R. W. Chambers, Introduction, pp. 460-65.

January, 1969

NOTES AND QUERIES

11

hero with easy assistance. Beowulf is a fairy- necessary to examine other points, notably tale with all the magic removed, as far as the nature of Beowulf's enemies and the possiblea paradox worth considering. curious resemblance to each other of the Moreover, there are a few points which three main episodes. may cast a glimmer on .to that indeterminate Of course the grave, thoughtful, dignified period before the story of Beowulf reached hero of the poem that we know bears little the stage of our manuscript, " this age of trace of the shaman. However, if Propp's dark riddles of culture ", as C. L. Wrenn calls analysis of structure does anything for us, it it.41 The unwritten laws of narrative struc- should give us some idea of the way in ture, as elucidated by Propp, make it easier which story-tellers, even Christians and to conceive how a story could be transmitted writers of epics, could be conditioned very for centuries, and even millennia, by illiterate strongly, over long periods, not so much by peoples, but the discovery does raise one the overt features of their stories, as by their question very obviously. If so many folk- enduring if insubstantial patterns of narratales have the same structure, what is the tion. We can never be sure of the chain of attraction, or the meaning of that structure transmission that precedes our manuscript. rather than another? Propp, though he thinks But we can at least hope to refine our theories the question is in the historian's province, as we grow to understand more of the possisuggests tentatively that the magic horses, bilities of poetry and narrative outside the ships, etc., that take the hero to the en- boundaries of our own literary culture. chanter's lair correspond to the traditional THOMAS ALAN SHIPPEY. methods of reaching the land of the dead, University of Birmingham. as the stress on theft or abduction seems to corroborate. The folk-tale would then be a story about the attack and defeat of death, SOME SIXTEENTH-CENTURY a theory also partly borne out by the " lived ANTEDATHNGS OF THE O.E.D. happily ever after" formula, and the curiously prevalent atmosphere of joy in TIN the course of reading the seven English highly morbid stories.42 This is a guess that logic books published before 1600, many can hardly be definitely substantiated, but earlier instances and words not found in the again, it fits well with some of the vestigial O.E.D. have come to light. Where these are features of Beowulf, the bear-hero. Rhys not specifically logical, they are included in Carpenter has recently produced a good deal the present collection. The logical words I of evidence to indicate, as is after all not hope to publish later, as part of a larger improbable, that to primitive peoples the project. bear is remarkable chiefly because it can hibernate,43 it appears to die and come to Antedatings i.e. life again. Was the Beowulf-figure then at abruptly. [O.E.D. 1590.] 1588 FRAUNCE one time an opponent of death? Are the Old Lawiers Log. 10b. It were against Platoes English epic and the Russian fairy-tales both precept and all Arte to iumpe abruptly from descendants of mythical narratives? That the highest and most general!, to the lowest this is not inherently unlikely is indicated by and most speciall. F. P. Magoun's remarks about the concept Academic, sb. [O.E.D. 1. 1586.] 1570 of mana in Germanic peoples and Beowulf s EVANS Abridg. logique C vi b. The judge1 own msegen. ' But to say more it would be ment of the Academikes: who doe alleage 41 C. L . Wrenn, " S o m e Earliest Anglo-Saxon all things to be uncertaine. C u l t - S y m b o l s " , p p . 40-56 of t h e M a g o un festadjudging, vbl. sb. [O.E.D. 1689.] 1570 schrift, e d d . Bessinger a n d Creed. 42 EVANS Abridg. logique Epistle p. 10. The O n e example being t h e G r i m m s ' Marchen Arte of reasoning . . . doth conteine the Machandelboom, where a young girl, after apparently decapitating h e r step-brother and seeing him whole skill of thorowly seeing and adiudgeaten b y his father, buries t h e bones, w h e n : ing, what both is, and ought to be in euery " Marleenken awerst w o o r s o recht licht u n vormatter. gnoogt, recht a s wenn d e Broder noch leewd.' 43 adjuvant, a. [O.E.D. a 1614.] 1574 tr. Rhys Carpenter, Folk-tale, fiction and saga in the Homeric epics, Berkeley 1946, esp. ch. v i , " The Ramus" Logike 21. The instruments also are Cult of t h e Sleeping B e a r " , p p . 116-35. nombred amongest the causes adiuuantes. 44 Francis P. M a g o u n Jr., " On t h e Survivals of application. [O.E.D. 1. 1632.] 1599 Pagan Belief in Anglo-Saxon E n g l a n d " , Harvard BLUNDEVIL Logike 33. The thing whereunto Theological Review, xl (1947), p p . 33-46.

Downloaded from http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/ at Deakin University Library on March 18, 2012