Repository path: workshop/translations/beowulf-parting/R04-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

Beowulf, ll. 1800–1866 — the parting from Hrothgar, into modern English

Contamination: high. Beowulf is plausibly the most-translated poem in English; dozens of complete versions are freely online. No published rendering of these lines was read before this text and its log were frozen and committed. That protects against priming and not against memory.

Two further primings, both declared, both material, and the second is new to this project:

1. The translator knew, before writing a word, exactly which lemmas of this passage have a modern English descendant — the reflex census (design/sites-frozen.md) was frozen and committed first, deliberately, so that the site list would be blind to all four renderings including this one. The cost is paid here: this translation's row is not blind, and the experiment excludes it from the primary statistic for that reason (design §4).
2. The edition's glossary supplies running English translations of the lines themselves, not only of words — see log §1. It is a fifth rendering, and the translator read parts of it.

The translation

Then the great-hearted one lay down to rest. The hall towered above him, wide and gold-adorned; the guest slept within, until the black raven, blithe of heart, announced the joy of heaven. Then the bright sun came hastening over the fields. The fighting men stirred themselves; the noblemen were eager to be off again to their own people, and the visitor, high in his own thoughts, meant to seek his ship far from there.

Then the brave man ordered Hrunting brought to the son of Ecglaf, bade him take back his sword, that precious iron; he thanked him for the loan of it, and said that he reckoned the battle-companion a good one, strong in war — he found no fault in words with the blade's edge. That was a man of spirit.

And when the fighting men were ready for the journey, equipped in their gear, the prince went, honoured among the Danes, up to the high seat where the other one was; the hero, bold in battle, greeted Hrothgar.

Beowulf spoke, the son of Ecgtheow:

"Now we seafarers, come from far off, wish to say that we are set on seeking Hygelac. We have been well entertained here, and as we would have wished; you have dealt well by us. If, then, there is anything at all on this earth by which I might earn more of your heart's love than I have earned yet, lord of men, I shall be ready at once for deeds of war. If I learn, across the reach of the waters, that your neighbours are pressing you with terror, as those who hated you did at times, I will bring you a thousand retainers, warriors to your help.

"I know this much of Hygelac, the lord of the Geats, young though he is — the people's guardian — that he will back me with words and with deeds, so that I may do you honour and carry a thicket of spears to your aid, the support of my strength, wherever you have need of men. And if Hrethric, the prince's son, should then settle on coming to the courts of the Geats, he will find many friends there. Far countries are better sought by a man who is worth something in himself."

Hrothgar spoke in answer to him:

"The wise Lord has sent these words into your mind. I have never heard a man speak more prudently at so young an age. You are strong in body and seasoned in mind, wise in your speech. I count it likely that, if it should come about that the spear takes Hrethel's heir, or grim sword-play, or sickness, or iron takes your lord, the people's guardian, and you still have your life, then the Sea-Geats will have no better man to choose for king, no better treasure-keeper of warriors, if you will hold your kinsmen's kingdom. Your temper pleases me better the longer I know it, dear Beowulf.

"You have brought it about that there shall be peace held in common between these two peoples, the men of the Geats and the Spear-Danes, and that the strife shall rest, and the treacherous hostilities they endured before; that, for as long as I rule this wide kingdom, treasures shall be held in common, and many a man shall greet another with good gifts across the gannet's bath; the ring-prowed ship shall carry offerings and tokens of love over the high sea. I know these peoples to be firmly settled toward foe and toward friend alike, blameless in every way, after the old fashion."

(~600 words of modern English from ~370 of Old English.)

Translator's log

Frozen 2026‑07‑29, before any published rendering of these lines was opened and before the study limb that uses this text was designed. Decisions and alternatives, not quality claims. Any evaluative sentence carries internal-judgment-only.

§1. The apparatus, and a correction owed to this translation's predecessor

T-beowulf-ingeld-R04-v1 (S018) says it used the H&S glossary as a dictionary and withheld the Notes "because notes on a passage routinely contain running translations of it." The distinction is not sound, and it took translating a second passage out of the same book to see it. The glossary routinely contains running translations too. Its entries cite line numbers and, at a large fraction of them, quote the line's own Old English followed by an English rendering in italics:

• l. 1803 (bodian): "hrefn blaca heofones wynne blīð-heort bodode, the black raven announced joyfully heaven's delight (the rising sun)"
• l. 1822 (dugan): "þū ūs wēl dohtest, you did us good, conducted yourself well towards us"
• l. 1839 (feor-cȳð): "foreign lands are better sought by him who trusts to his own ability"
• l. 1844 (þingian): "I never heard a man so young speak so wisely"
• l. 1866 (wīse): "ealde wīsan (after ancient custom)"

Counted mechanically — an italicised English clause of three or more words within thirty characters of a citation of the line — 34 of this passage's 67 lines carry one, and 40 of the 56 lines of the Ingeld passage do. The predecessor's declaration should therefore be read as narrower than it reads: the Notes were withheld and a second source of running translation was not.

What this does to the present artifact is stated rather than minimised. The glossary is in effect a fifth rendering, produced by two philologists in 1893, and I saw part of it while translating. At several of the reflex sites the study limb cares about, the glossary's own English declines the modern reflex — blīð-heort glossed joyous in heart, dugan at 1822 glossed did us good, wīse at 1866 glossed after ancient custom. Whether that pushed this translation's refusals is not measurable from here, and the experiment therefore treats this row as primed and reports it apart.

§2. Reflex decisions — the twenty-three sites, and what was actually live

The census was frozen before translating, so for once I can record what happened at each site while translating rather than reconstructing it. I take one reflex of twenty-three.

• blīð-heort → "blithe of heart" (l. 1803) — taken, and the only one. Blithe-hearted and glad-hearted were the live alternatives. "Blithe" was chosen because English still has it, because it is doing the compound's own work, and because the raven's cheerfulness at a corpse-strewn dawn is the joke of the half-line and joyous flattens it. It is archaic-tinted and I knew that.
• wine → "battle-companion" (l. 1811), not war-friend. The compound gūð-wine is the sword. War-friend was live and was refused as reading like a kenning glossary; battle-companion keeps the personification, which is the point — Beowulf is praising a sword by calling it a comrade.
• mōd three times, three different English words (ll. 1824, 1845, 1854): heart's love, seasoned in mind, your temper. This is a thread I broke on purpose and it is the decision I am least sure of. One word across all three (mind, or spirit) was live. mōd-lufu is affection, on mōde frōd is judgment, mōd-sefa is disposition, and no single modern noun covers all three without going vague. The Ingeld anchor's finding that a lexical thread can only be held by manufacturing a compound applies here and I declined to manufacture one.
• hyrde → "guardian" twice (ll. 1833, 1850) — held consistently, unlike mōd. Shepherd was live and was refused: it is the literal sense, and in modern English it drags in a pastoral Christianity the half-line does not have.
• folc → "people" three times (ll. 1833, 1850, 1856) — held. Folk was live at all three and refused as too homely for a king's title.
• þegn → "retainers" (l. 1830). Thanes was live. Refused because thane in current English is mostly Shakespeare's Scotland, which puts the wrong country in the reader's ear.
• dugan → "you have dealt well by us" (1822) / "worth something in himself" (1840). Doughty was never seriously live. The etymological link between the two sites is invisible in my English, as it was in the Ingeld passage.
• Refused without much deliberation: bodian → announced; sceacan → came hastening; æðeling → noblemen / the prince; faran → be off; cēol → his ship; heard → the brave man; lēoflīc → precious; cweðan → said; mōdig → a man of spirit; dēor → bold in battle; wittig → wise; līcian → pleases me; sacu → the strife; wealdan → I rule; fēond → foe; wīse → after the old fashion.

§3. Decisions that are not about reflexes

• §3a. Register. Plain modern prose, as in the sibling translation, so that the two are comparable. Not neutral: it is the choice that makes almost every reflex refusal automatic, and I made it knowing that.
• §3b. rūm-heort (1800) → "the great-hearted one." H&S gloss big-hearted, noble-spirited. Roomy-hearted is the calque and is unusable; magnanimous imports Latin. The line's referent is Hrothgar going to bed and the epithet is doing throwaway formulaic work, so a formulaic English epithet was wanted rather than an exact one.
• §3c. gæst inne swæf (1801) → "the guest slept within." gæst here is guest / stranger, not gāst spirit, and the two are one letter apart in this edition. Recorded because it is the kind of site where a wrong reading produces perfectly good English.
• §3d. scaðan ōnetton (1804) → "the fighting men stirred themselves." sceaða is literally injurer, ravager, used here of Beowulf's own Geats — a word with a hostile edge applied to the friendly side. The ravagers hurried is the literal version and reads as a mistake. What is lost is that the poem calls its heroes by a word for raiders, and I could not keep it without the sentence appearing to change sides. Same shape as the Ingeld passage's mēce/bill problem: the loss is not lexical, it is attitudinal.
• §3e. collen-ferhð (1807) → "high in his own thoughts." H&S: of swollen mind, standing higher than others, high-minded. Modern high-minded means morally elevated, which is a different claim. Live alternatives: bold-spirited, swollen with pride (too negative), elated.
• §3f. heht ... Hrunting beran (1808–9) → "ordered Hrunting brought to the son of Ecglaf." The Old English leaves the direction of the giving to be inferred; Beowulf is returning a borrowed sword, so I supplied back at 1809 ("take back his sword"). Forced explicitation: English needs the particle to make the scene legible, and the source has no word for it. Same category as the anchor's article problem — the target's obligatory choices making the translation more determinate than the source.
• §3g. gār-holt (1835) → "a thicket of spears." H&S: forest of spears, i.e. crowd of spears. Forest is the gloss's word and was live; thicket was chosen for density over height. The compound's second element holt has a modern reflex, holt, which is dialect-only and was excluded from the census for that reason (rule (c)) — it is worth noting that it was never a temptation.
• §3h. heoru-grimme (1848) → "grim sword-play." The compound is sword-fierce, an adjective qualifying hild (battle). Sword-grim battle is available and is what the calque would give; I turned it into a noun phrase because English will not take two adjectives of that weight in front of battle without sounding like a translation.
• §3i. ganotes bæð (1862) → "the gannet's bath." Kept whole. The kenning is transparent, the bird is a real bird with an English name, and flattening it to the sea would remove the one figure in Hrothgar's speech. Opposite decision from §3d: there the figure was dropped because keeping it misled, here it is kept because it does not.
• §3j. sceal hring-naca ofer hēaðu bringan lāc and luf-tācen (1863–4) → "the ring-prowed ship shall carry offerings and tokens of love over the high sea." H&S give hring-naca as ship with iron rings; ring-prowed is my compound and is an invention — the source says nothing about prows. It was chosen over ring-bound and iron-ringed because those read as descriptions of cargo. Logged as an addition, not a rendering.
• §3k. lāc (1864) → "offerings." The word covers gift, offering, sacrifice. Gifts was live and was refused only because gifts and tokens of love puts two near-synonyms together; offerings keeps a formality the exchange between two kingdoms wants.
• §3l. Speech boundaries. The edition marks every line of direct speech with an opening double quote and the whole of Hrothgar's answer runs unbroken to 1866. I broke both speeches into paragraphs at 1831 and at 1856 for a reader's sake. Nothing in the source licenses those breaks.
• §3m. Ic þā lēode wāt ... geworhte (1864–6). The syntax is genuinely uncertain to me: I know these peoples [to be] firmly wrought toward foe and toward friend, blameless in every way, after the old fashion. geworhte may be past participle plural agreeing with lēode, which is what I have taken. An alternative reading makes it "I know the people [will be] firmly disposed" — a prediction rather than a description. I chose the descriptive reading and the sentence is a prophecy either way, since the poem is about to break the peace.
• §3n. What is flattened throughout. The half-line and its caesura are gone; every appositive epithet is either kept as a noun phrase or dropped; the alliteration is not attempted. That is R04 and it is declared rather than defended.

§4. What I did not do

No published translation of these lines was opened. No note in the edition was read. Line numbers, the glossary, and the passage itself are the whole apparatus.