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Introduces Beowulf as a foundational English poem and explains its Anglo-Saxon origins, setting, and enduring appeal. The speaker frames it as a heroic tale rooted in the language and imagination of early England.
listen there's a poem it speaks in the voice of England's past like a flame beyond the language of the living it's more than a thousand years old and yet it still speaks to us it's called
baywolf I'm going in search of the roots of this great poem and the barbaric Splendor of the world it depicts it is not fantasy this shows what a what a a golden reality it was it's a world caughtbetween the Pagan and the Christian it's a landscape inhabited by monsters if you see this Monster's red Source Alik burning eyes you get it's the tale of a hero beay wolf who confronts a dragon in its mysterious learnthe dragon came raging spat death Fire War Flash is blazed in the distance its language has seduced a Nobel prizewinning poet it's marvelous to be reminded of the the heft of of words for the first time on televisionwe're allowed to examine the Priceless original manuscript that's great isn't it beay wolf and anglos sax and poetry are at the root of the great tree of English language and literature which has spread across the whole of the
planet to my mind it's our nation's greatest gift to the
world beay wolf is a work of the Anglo-Saxons the Germanic tribes who came to our Shores in the fifth
century so my journey in search of beay wolf starts on the east coast of England where these tribes first settled in the Dark Ages the Anglo Saxons were impoverished Pagan immigrants who came to Britain the time of thefall of the Roman Empire as economic migrants seeking New Life new lands they sailed up these esteres the star the deepen the Orwell and created their little kingdoms they were a minority they made little influence on our DNAour DNA as Britain is in general much older but they had a profound effect on our society and our culture and especially our language and hence on our thought for language is
thought the English we speak today is descended from their speech our most commonly used words are theirs green red hand body words that describe key Concepts mother father friend love hate forgiveness Life Death God core words that stillDefine our beliefs our emotions and our relations as human beings now though bwolf is the earliest great work of English literature is not set in Britain it's set in Denmark with a little bit in Sweden and in thatsense it's a postmigration tale you think of the Irish or the Italians in America and the tenacity and affection with which they hold on to the memories of their European home the Anglo-Saxons were like that for centuries theyclung on to the myth of their coming take the famous 10th Century poem The Battle of Brun sithan angle on saaka up BEC of Brad briu since the Angles and the Saxons came up over the broad waves br
beg they were seeking Britain taking the
Land part of the appeal of poetry to the Anglo-Saxons lay in the power of those ancestral stories and though many centuries separate us from the original audience poetry like baywolf can still be compelling like so many great HollywoodAdvent es baywolf is the perennial story of the hero's Quest the hero who fights monsters saves his people and finds
Visits a reconstructed Anglo-Saxon hall to hear Beowulf performed aloud and explores the poem's opening scenes. This section introduces Shield Sheafson, Hrothgar, Grendel, and Beowulf's first heroic mission.
himself now the very best way to experience be wolf is to see it spoken live and I've come to Kent to see it performed in a fantastic fullscale Recreation of an Anglo-Saxon Royal Hall it's been built here inwickhurst by the members of a historical reenactment Society regia and gorum who were all hooked on the Anglo-Saxons and their world hi Kim good to see you again fantastic go absolutely fabulous isn't it coold lumy look at thiswhat is it about the Anglo-Saxon age that is so appealing what not to love when when you get to wear this kind of stuff isn't it just fantastic yeah today the group have come to hear a performance ofbaywolf by actor Julian Glover for the last 30 years in between roles in Star Wars and Harry Potter he's been doing a one-man show of the poem to get in the mood his audience are preparing a Saxon
Feast the poem starts not with baywolf himself but with a flashback to another Mythic hero Shield shifing a magic boy cast up on the shores of Denmark
wait here
listen we have heard of the thriving of the Throne of Denmark was it not Shield sheving who found in childhood lacked clothing yet he lived and prospered grew in strength and stature under the heavens that was good couldhe was a good King to be a good King it's a key idea in the poem now one of Shield's Descendants the Danish King rothar builds a great golden Hall called herat but in the darkness outside lurks amalevolent Spirit grindel the fiend's name Grim Infamous Wasteland stalker Master of the Moore and the fen Fortress you found in herro the Nobles after carousing slept after supper mad with rage he struck quickly this creature ril grim andgreedy Savage and unsparing grasped 30 Warriors and away he was Homeward glut Lusty with booty Laden with the slain when the day broke and with the dawn's light grindle's outrage was openly to be seen to the Anglo-Saxon audience
grindle's Rampage was not just a random act of Terror in attacking the Meade Hall he was attacking society as a whole for here the rituals were enacted which bound their society together so the hall is a center ofnot only social order but moral order and when the monster comes in the night and starts to tear the king's followers limb from limb it's time for the hero bearwolf he was of main strength for foremost of allthe men that trod the Earth at that time great framed great heart this Prince picked his men from the flower of his folk the fiercest among them that might be found 14 SE skilled bearwolf LED them down tothe Beach's Fringe beay Wolf's a young man at this point he leaves his native Sweden and sails with his warband to Denmark their mission to boldly go and rid roar's Hall of its demonic
Investigates how Beowulf survived in a single manuscript and how fire damaged the Cotton collection. The discussion highlights the manuscript's fragility, its monster imagery, and the poem's opening battle with Grendel.
Invader now far back in time the story originated in oral Tales so how was the poem handed down to us across a distance of more than a thousand years and how did it become a literary classic to findout I've got an appointment at the British
Library the poem survived by sheer chance in a single manuscript it's usually kept in the library's Treasures room or in a Security Vault deep underground some would say it's our nation's most precious litery
Relic now the baywolf story looks back to the late 5th Century it was reworked and reto by the BS as BS do at some point it was written down and finally took the form we have it around theyear 1000 this is a Big Thrill for me to say the least I first studied the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the old British Library when I was a student I never worked on the bearwolf manuscript you simply weren't allowedto it was too fragile and it's never been filmed before so this is quite an exciting moment the baywolf manuscript was one of many medieval books in a private library that the cotton collection which was devastated by firein the 18th century Fantastic look God now look at this this is amazing isn't it what immediately becomes apparent is the fire of 1731 doesn't it exactly in 1731 the manuscripts were housed in Ashburnham house in London Faithfully
named Ash Burnham and the fire broke house and many of them manuscripts were damaged a few unfortunately were destroyed in their entirety uh Reports say that fragments of manuscripts were seen floating in a wind like butterflies and Vyes I remember working on one of these years ago as a student and the the really badly burned ones of the the Vellum the sheep skin has just kind of crumpled up like that hasn't it they're incredibly fragilevery drle in the 19th century the damaged baywolf manuscript was rebound found keeping it in its original form as part of a compilation of stories written by the same two Anglo-Saxon scribes I mean the compilation has all sortsof other things in it doesn't it I mean actually you're turning it there to monster pictures aren't you yeah here we have a picture of great from a Tex known as the marvels of the East yeah in the
top we have a headless man with his face and his chest yeah we have two dragons 150t long and we have two camels I call them comedy camels but actually meant to represent elephants the artist m from Camelsinteresting isn't these strange dragons and monsters you can see the connection with bolf well exactly the Scribe is the same as for part of a bolf poem itself so although this particular text doesn't have any relationship with thepent it does signify that the scribes were actually interested in Monsters itself it's Small Wonder then that a tale of creatures like grindle should find a place in this medieval monster melony let's let's time for the beginning ofthe the bill of manuscriptitself here we go what the opening words listen up listen listen we
G that's the the beginning of the tale that's great isn't
it here's the passage where bwolf and his 14 Companions spend the night in hrothgar's Hall knowing that grindle will return come
onshenga gliding through the Shadows came the Walker in the night the Warriors slept all except one and this man kept an unblinking watch he waited pent heart swelling with anger against his foe from off the morand's misting Fellscame grindel stalking that of Mur under Miss leam grel gongan he moved through the dark saw with perfect clearness the gold panel Hall me drinking place of men the door gave way at a touch of his hands rageinflamed wage bent he tore the Hall's Jaws hastening onwards angrily advancing from his eyes shot a light in un lovely form of fire he saw in the hall the host of Young Warriors and in his heart exalted horriblemonster all his hopes swelling to a gluttonous meal as a first step he set his greedy hands on a sleeping Soldier savagely tore him nashed at his bone joints bted huge gobit sucked at his veins and had soon
eaten all of the man to his fingers and feet the then he moved forward reached to cizar Warrior bearwolf stretched out for him with his spite filled fist but the faster man for stalling rose up over his armand quickly gripped that sickening hand hateful to each was the breath of the other rip in the giant flesh frame showed then shoulder muscles sprang apart a snapping of tendons bone locks burst the arm of the demon wascived from his side and grindle flew death sick to his joyless den where he knew that the end of his life was in sight bearwolf had cleansed terot saved the whole from persecution and as a signal to allthe hero hung the hand the arm and torn of shoulder the entire limb grindle's whole grip Beneath The Soaring
roof and so the first part of the poem ends to us the basic Arc of narrative in baywolf is quite familiar but around the manuscript itself there's still a real mystery we don't know when or where the poemwas initially composed and performed and we don't know where the successive oral retellings were finally shaped into this written
version but within the poem there are Clues to its origin
Follows clues in East Anglia that may connect Beowulf to the world of Anglo-Saxon kings. Sutton Hoo, its ship burial, and the treasures found there are used to illuminate the poem's royal culture and material imagination.
so first of all to find out where the original oral poem and its poet might have come from I'm heading to one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms in East Anglia this is the town of Woodbridge on the riverDebon in suffk like most places around here its roots lie over a thousand years ago in the Anglo-Saxonperiod all around us are signposts to the Anglo-Saxon past down river is Kingston the tun or Farm of the kings of the East angles and up river is offered the Ford of woer the wolf one of their sixthCenturyKings and on the other Shore is the site of the greatest archaeological Discovery ever made in the British Isles and of course this is the return of the FK born hero the Satan who baywolf expert Dr Sam Newtonlike me is fascinated by the story of Sutton who a place with old Legends of Royal tombs and hidden gold you've got so many stories of uh buried treasure in this corner of suffk No Doubt people would would
would be imagining all sorts of treasure buried there but in this particular case Elizabeth verse astrologer Dr John D is said to have dug here and then um the great lady who owned the land here in the 1930sold Edith pretty um she she was certainly a lady who was interested in Legends and we know she took part in the Woodbridge spiritualist congregation across the river here and on the basis of all that she became convincedthat there was gold in her Hills and which is what of course led to exactly talk about dreams come
true Edith pretty's dreams centered on several mysterious Mounds scattered around the area known as Sutton who who meaning promet in Anglo-Saxon in 1938 she finally approached local archaeologist basil Brown to
investigate when I came over I met Mrs predy and walked down to the uh mountain and I said which would you like excavated and she said what about that one in May 1939 Brown began Excavating helped by thelocal gamekeeper and by Mrs pretty's Gardener driving a trench from the East End of the mound they traced rows of ship rivets still in position and soon they uncovered the ghost of a great ship with an undisturbed burialchamber they'd found an Anglo-Saxon ship burial and it lay beneath the exact spot where Mrs pretty had told Brown to
dig look you can see the the post there marking the sight of the prow of the ship oh yeah and the stern right out there so this is the ship length here exactly the line of the KE issomething like 90 ft that's a massive ship even by today's standards on the river yeah yeah yeah yeah and this beautiful ship what a way to go and of course it brings with it the notion that death isbut a point of embarcation in a journey you know it must meant so much to them hence the effort of bringing this massive ship six six tons at least when light all the way up here and of coursethis is where baywolf comes in uh because the opening movement of the poem culminates with a magnificent account of a royal shipfuneral a boat with a ringed neck in the Haven and there they laid out their Lord and Master Giver of wound gold in the waste of the ship in Majesty by the Mast a mound of treasures from Far
countries was fetched aboard her and it is said that no boat was ever more bravely fitted out with the weapons of a warrior War accent swords and Body Armor high overhead they hoisted and fixed a gold Signum gavehim to the flood let the Seas take him and around him the ancestral Treasures yeah and that's in the poem isn't it in bwolf theya the folk the folk Treasures fantastic uh the crown jewels if you
like no trace of the body of the Dead King was ever found but the extraordinary Treasures buried with him caused a
sensation rewrote English History almost yes because this has opened up a lost chapter of English History a golden age no less but had a had an extraordinary impact on the study of Bay Wolf 2 well it is notfantasy this shows what a what a a golden reality it was yeah I mean the poet the poet describes these kind of talismanic artifacts they're almost endowed with a kind of magical power aren't they the gifts between Kingsand their their Warrior Heroes and you think it's just a poet talking and then under this mound there they are the most magnificent find was a ceremonial helmet when reconstructed this literally fabulous piece revealed more close connections withthe baywolf poem look at this awesome face Michael so fantastic isn't it it is you see the bo yes heads there with a B tusks exactly located as in in the B description over clay Oran the bore shaped
sha over the cheek guards it protected the lives of the of the war-minded Warriors you know in other words what to us is an inanimate metal decoration for them is a an animate agent of protection you get theimpression that no helmet without a ball helmet would be considered safe so $64,000 Question H um whose helmet was this good question on the present evidence the unavoidable conclusion is a king called radal not just uh king ofEast Anglia one of the first overlords ofBritain and it's in the family tree of Redal and the East anglian kings that we find the next clue that may connect the baywolf poet to this corner of England the waing the name of the an royal familynamed after their eponymous hero woer means Little Wolf waing are wolfing and of course the wolfing are quite big in the world of bwolf once more we can identify the Danish queen weow as an East anglian dynastic ancestor
and the name of one of her children namely Rothman is listed in the upper inches of the East angan Royal pedig okay and as a royal name you don't get it in any other early Source wow this suggeststhen that the author of B wolf was well aware of the pedigree of the East anglian royal family well it's great isn't it it's a rather unavoidable conclusion it might suggest that b wolf at some stage went througha stage of composition here in East Anga and if so where very appropriately we're just uh crossing the parish boundary uh to renam the known site of East anglian Royal Authority this is in the olding spe aun akingly town a Kingston no less I think these links that Sam argues are persuasive and exciting here in suffk you feel you can almost touch the world of the baywolf
poet the area by the later medieval Church of St Gregory at rendlesham is the most likely site for the Royal Hall where the East anglian Kings might have listened to their Court poets
so when we talk about a royal residence in the 7th Century we're talking about all the service Industries being here as well aren't we I mean the metal workers the crft maybe the people who made the jewelry atSu who and of course most Central of all the great golden Hall the the focus for for assembly for for Royal audiences a great barn-like structure nothing less than a Camelot of the north this great ideal which thiswould a reality and in it the poets entertain the king and his Warriors absolutely telling Tales of no Feast is complete without the poets telling the stess the entertainment and we can imagine that well almost on this spotI mean within this immediate area yes absolutely all the indications are here now it came into his mind that he would command the construction of a huge Mead Hall a house greater than men on Earth ever had heard
of and share the gifts God had Ed on him upon its floor with folk young and old there was music of the harp sweet minstral singing perfect int telling of the remote first making of the race of
Explores the poem's landscape of fens, monsters, and Christian-Pagan tension, including Grendel's mother and the role of supernatural belief. The section also examines magical weapons and the smithing of Anglo-Saxon swords.
man a possible East anglian origin for the poem is hinted at not only in the Sutton who treasure and the family tree of the king it's also suggested by the landscape itself the brooding F of the poem arestill to be found here in suffk on a frosty morning you can easily imagine ogres emerging from the Mist but there's a Twist from the 7th Century the Kings here were Christian and in those days the F werethe scene of spirit Wars one missionary saint St botel founded his Monastery in these marshes from here he would go out and fight Fen demons with prayer just as Pagan Heroes like bearwolf fought to rid hrothgar's Kingdom ofmonstrous Marsh dwellers like grindle their weapons were different but the saint and the hero inhabit the same landscape don't forget Anglo-Saxon England the England of be wolf was a wild and underpopulated land there were no real towns the
forests were full of wolves and the isolated farms and settlements the lonely monasteries like the one that stood on that prometer there icon were little centers of human life amidst a vast Untamed nature their mental world was surroundedby monsters and the Unseen to them was palpable and all was threatened to burst over the threshold into the real and in the story of bwolf after the killing of grindle the next eruption from the Demonic cathic waterydepths of the mirr was to the early medieval mind and maybe to us still too even more threatening because it was female grindle's
mother grindle's mother now purposed blackhearted gluttonous on a Roth bearing visit of Vengeance for her son she descended on herot and fate swept on its wheel when the mother of grindle found her way among those men she graspeda man quickly the king's good friend Ashera clutched him to herself and was a away to the fen bearwolf was not there herot was in uproar grindle's hand had gone
witherfrom bearwolf to the alien the mother monster has an honored place in horror stories grindle's mother may be fearsome but she still feels a mother's bond to her child and to the poet that's even a source of imaginativesympathy it makes her more than just a scary monster she's a perverse mirror to mankind and the poet strengthens that connection for his audience by giving his demons a Biblical origin in the poem grindle and his kin aredescribed as the seed of Cain that's the son of Adam in the Bible who' committed the primordial crime of brother killing for which he and his descendants would be cast out forever exiled fed to wander fed always tofight their battle against humanity and goodness and in the poem grindle is described as ala winner the old enemy and even better fiend maninis it hardly needs translating does it the fiend of mankind those ideas and images come
all the way down to Shakespeare and his contemporaries and out in the landscape today you can still find theirtraces here in East Anglia the name of grand is still applied to marshy pits and water courses today they call them G
grindel and the idea of a grindel like Fen monster as an enemy of Christianity is one that has also hung on here I've come to the medieval Church of bbor to meet a local folklore expert Peter
Jennings take a look at this Cathedral of the marshes there was never more than 100 houses in BLB and yet this fantastic big place of course there was a monastery sth Century time of bearwolf already here so sowhat's the legend of this place then P well the the the the tale goes that 4th of August 1577 huge Thunder stomms and of course the thunderstorm is when you expect won and His World hunt to descend withhis devil dog black shook shook this is an ancient Anglo-Saxon word actually Peter isn't it it means monster in Anglo Saxon yeah from Shar suar yeah so he a devil dog yes black and Shaggy sort of like burningeyes this is very interesting it's just like just like grle with the light the bful light your eyes yeah yeah yeah doesn't like the sound of singing all this Christian stuff just like Bott demons in the fence yes
exactly and black shook comes down and down the aisle a man and a boy get in his way they die because the belief is is if you look into those fiery sorer like eyes you're dead if not thenwithin a 12 month people get out of the way and of course each little charges through this is a bit I've really got to show you you're going to love this so I'm black shook goes to this doorThe North Door Now The North Door belongs to the devil in the church as far as the St Le folk law goes and this is where his claw marks burnt their way into that door and they have beenthere for a very long time so the East anglian tourist board two the times really got to work here they yeah fantastic believe it or not as you like by T the times Bogies like black shook were Fading
Into folklore but the Anglo-Saxons believed in the reality of Supernatural forces that could only be defeated by Magic whether by the cross of the saintly Exorcist or by the sword of the hero in the poem when bwolf pursuesgrindle's mother to her Lair it's a magic sword that pulls him through then he saw among the armor on the wall a giant sword from former days this Wonder was so enormous that no one man would be equalto bearing it in battle play well it was a Giant's Forge that had fashioned it so well the gayat champion shaking now with war rage caught it by the rich Hilt and careless of his life brandished its circlesand brought it down in Fury the catcher full and fairly biting into the neck the blade sheared through the backbone the sword was gory he was glad at the
deed for the Anglo-Saxons weapons like beay Wolf's blade had Supernatural power and the Very process of forging them must have seemed like a kind of spell
workking Hector Cole is one of the very few people today who know how to forge weapons as the Anglo-Saxons
did it's a magic process isn't it you can see why ancient societies thought the Smith was somehow a magician oh absolutely it goes back into the early iron working when the iron was a gift from the gods becauseit literally came from the heavens in the the meteors and man has captured that and he can work it and he's using Earth he's using fire he's using wind he's using water he's using all the elements and thenhis skill to actually create these magical pieces of work and they saw the process from a shapeless lump of what looks like rock yes to a beautiful deadly and extraordinary artif it's a it's a secret isn't it amystery it is it is a mystery
in creating his Blade the swordsmith would first make several separate rods and then twist them weld them together and Hammer them flat and it was the twisting of the rods which gave each Anglo-Saxon sword its individual personality creatingintricate patterns in the beaten
blade
wow just look at that can you see the pattern in it there's the strange poisoned branches AR they in God it's just great is it it is like waves exactly as the Anglo-Saxon says the way are sword it'sRippling yes you see something into their world don't you when you look into these patterns ohyes then H denner's son presented bearwolf with a gold standard as a victory gift an embroidered Banner also breast mail and a helmet and a sword carried high that was both precious object and token of
Moves to Northumbria and Bede's Christian world to show how Beowulf fits into a broader cultural struggle between pagan tradition and Christianity. The Dream of the Rood is presented as a key example of how older heroic imagery was adapted for Christian meaning.
Honor so the poem's world and its honored Heroes were Pagan and yet the PO himself was Christian after all even the monsters are seen in biblical terms as C's kin and that cultural tension between the Pagan and theChristian lies at the very heart of the poem but what does that tell us about baywolf and its
audience to find out I'm traveling to the Northeast to what was was once the ancient Kingdom of NorthUmbria in early Anglo-Saxon times the area around Newcastle was the intellectual Powerhouse of ChristianEngland this journe is a kind of pilgrimage to me if that doesn't sound too corny whenever I'm up in the Northeast I always try and make the trip cross to a small former Mining and ship building Village onthe South Bank of the time it's because it was there in the early 8th century that the north umbrian monk beid who was a sundland man wrote his famous book he called it the ecclesiastical history of the EnglishNation it's a kind of defining text of the Anglo-Saxon age but it also it seems to me throws fascinating light onto the context of baywolf and he wrote it in
jaro
hard to imagine isn't it but this is one of the most resonant landscapes in British history it's a typical Anglo-Saxon monastic site a bit like hion in suffer on a prometer between two rivers just look the river thflowing down to the Sea at tinmouth and right below us the river Dawn now a blackened industrial stream a really sad sight and behind me where the petrol storage terminal is and the serid ranks of Nissan cars wasa huge tidal pool jaros slake comes from a good old English word slan to fill up as in to slake your
thirst looking at the slake today you might think that bead's landscape is gone forever but the remains of his Monastery are still here this is one of the root places of
englishness so there you are this is what survives of the Anglo-Saxon Monastery of jro built in 681 this is where bead spent his whole life from the age of seven there's a wonderful story of him at the ageof 14 as the only Survivor along with the Abbot of a terrible outbreak of plague still managing to keep the services going and this is where in old age he wrote his great book The Core idea of thenarrative is conversion the way beid tells it the conversion of the Pagan English was pretty straightforward great Kings would see the Divine Light and be converted and their nobles and their people would just follow but in reality theconflict between Christianity and paganism was long drawn out and never conclusively won and in the cultural battles and spirit Wars of the 8th Century poetry was a key medium and it was fought over just look at this this
is a letter from a a northumbrian cleric and he's talking about what went on at the monks feasts inside monasteries and the popularity of poems like baywolf ver leganto in Sak Al convivio the word of God should beread in the communal feasts of the monks not the Pagan poems the Pagan songs quidel chisto what has inel to do with Christ ingel a hero mentioned in baywolf it almost sounds as if it's an attack on baywolfitself doesn't it and here's the punchline angusta Estus the house of Christ is narrow and cannot include both the works of the church fathers and the poems of the Pagan
poets but as so often in history the old ways are tenacious they're never swept away overnight and the old poetry the very voice of the early English found a newsubject we've come to this remote corner of Dum in Scotland in what was the kingdom of North thria in Anglo-Saxon times to find one of the most interesting monuments from that age it's in the church here at ruffelland it's got quite a story to tell in a later time of spirit Wars the Protestant Reformation this Monument was deemed idolatrous in the 17th century it was broken up by zealous Presbyterians and pieces were thrown into apit but later still it was reassembled it's a great Stone cross from the age of
baywolf here it is this is the cross day isn't that
fantastic it's an Anglo Saxon preaching cross nearly 18 ft High when it was made you've got to imagine bright colors Reds and purples yellows whites guilt for the Halos on Christ and the Saints and on it texts andimages from the Christian story they're just great aren't they this is Mary Magdalene washing Christ's feet and drying it with her hair come and have a look around theside it's amazingly well preserved given that it was SM smed into bits isn't it now look at this wonderful image here of Christ standing on the head of what one can only call monsters it's an illusion to thePsalms the triumph over the devil through the treading down of serpents and dragons and basilisks and lions very pale wolf fine isn't it now here's the most fantastic element of this amazing Monument you see running down on the
side in the two strips bit worn but you can see these are runes these are the script of the ancient Germanic peoples the runes quote from a poem which after baywolf is one of the greatest works of anglo-saxonliterature it's called the dream of the rude and it shows how the old Pagan themes in poetry were carried down to enrich the Christianimagination and even to help conversion
the poem takes the form of a dream Vision the poet is the dreamer he has the vision in the middle of the night and it's an incredibly archaic idea it's like the ancient Chans or Spirit mediums who aresend to the gods to gain their secret knowledge and bring it back for the benefit of humankind it's an idea that's thousands of years older than Christianity the poet's vision is of Christ's cross listen he says I willtell the best of Dreams which I had at midnight when all the world sleeps I dreamt I saw a wondrous tree towering in the sky above me suffused with light the brightest of beams and then that most beautifulof trees spoke these words long ago it was I still remember it I stood on the edge of the forest when they came to cut me down strong foes carried me away and set me on a hill and
then the young hero Christ firm and unflinching stripped himself Brave in the sight of all minded to save Mankind and I trembled when the hero clasped me and they pierced me with dark Nails all creation wept lamenting theKing's
death Christ has become by now the Germanic hero Victorious even in his defeat and the tree takes on the Persona of a loyal member of the war band I could have killed them all the tree says those Fusthe same word as in baywolf but the tree out of loyalty to the Lord must become the instrument of his death
by equating the Pagan Tree of Life with Christ's cross the Christian poet created something uniquely English which could reconcile people to the new
religion so there's a fabulous blurring of theological boundaries if I can put it that way between the Pagan and the Christian in the dream of the the rude you've got Christ as the leader of the war band speakingtrees and Cosmic magic just as in baywolf you've got holy God the creator of the world and the sins of the seed of Cain and maybe that helps us understand how the poem actually worked for an Anglo-Saxon audience
Returns to Beowulf's last act, where the aging king faces the dragon and the poem's fatalistic vision becomes central. The speaker reflects on the poem's emotional depth, its modern revival, and the transformation of Beowulf from warrior to wise ruler.
it's been said that the Christianity in baywolf is just a veneer but in its Vivid portrayal of the Pagan past the poem honored the ancestors and allowed the old world to live on in the new after all tothem the Pagan ped like the Christian future was still god-given the minstrel told how long ago the Lord formed Earth exalting the Lord established the Sun and the Moon as lamps to illumin the land dwellers loaded the Acresof the world in the jewel work of branch and leaf bringing then to life each kind of creature that creeps and
moves and so we come to the poem's final act in a few lines the poet jumps 50 years baywolf is the king of his people the gats but now he's an old man 50 Winters he ruled grew grayin guardianship of the land till one began a horde guarding Dragon to put forth his power in the pitch black nighttime he guarded a gold horde in a towering Stone burial mound men knew not his entrance but oneday a slave on the run from a fogging felt his way in when he saw the dragon there he was struck with great Terror but even so stole from then a Solid Gold
Cup his treasure horde violated the enraged Dragon lays waste to B Wolf's Kingdom even the Royal Hall is destroyed before the dragon retreats to his lair and it's the Dragon's Lair which is the scene of beay Wolf's finalbattle the Anglo-Saxons had a vivid sense of living in an old landscape with Prehistoric long barrows and standing stones all around them the great Stone CES to their poets were the work of giants wondrous work of wall stonesand the ancient stone age burial mans were Heathen burials places where the ancestral Treasures were stored up and guarded by dragons this is one of them it's still known as whand Smithy whand was the anglosaxon Divine blacksmith theman who created the the magical swords and coats of chain mail for the
gods and even on a bright day under a cloud Fleck Sky it still feels like a place of mystery to the Anglo-Saxon mind these Standing Stones were like entry points to the underworld and local Legends have hung aroundthis Oxfordshire long Barrow for many centuries it was said that if you left your shoes here with a silver penny whand would shoe them for you and this is the kind of place the Anglo-Saxon audience imagined the locationfor be Wolf's final struggle he's like the old Gunslinger in a western movie who must face one last deadly enemy and of course he knows what will happen because as the poet says although his fate is unknowable it'sstill certain the war seasoned King sat down on the Headland spoke encouraging words to the friends of his Heth but gloomy his spirits death eager wandering he knew that fate waited to seek his Soul's horde him Wason
wusan greatan soul his fate hovered near unknowable but
certain that ruminative fatalistic quality I think is the key to baywolf in 1999 a new translation appeared that caught that field better than any before incredibly bwolf topped the best sellers won the book of the Year captured theimagination of a new generation of readers and it was written by the Nobel prize-winning poet Shamus heene for heene even the dragon itself must act according to its fate the way that the dragon is described is kind ofhe's full of sinuous energy he is the worm as they say in in in the Anglo Saxon he has been attacked himself he's been provoked and he just has to follow his nature as dragon do when they wakingup they go around and burn Villages so there's no sense of him being a malignant figure coming to do damage to bolf they're both caught in this web they are encountering a destiny encountering their fate the poem is
about tests in many ways I mean bolf is tested uh three times and U the first two are Warrior tests but I do feel that the third one is somehow more than it's a spirit spiritual test of adifferent sort and that calls I think to Something in the reader is a sense of having to live up to your own best possibilities and not not failing something and beol is full of comprehension facing the end nowold baywolf enters the Dragon's Den accompanied by wigl the one young Warrior who has the courage to stand by his King The Dragon came raging attacked once again terrifier flashing rushed in on our King crushed on his neckbetween bitter pangs wigl then disregarding the head struck below it aimed through and the fire quickly slackened in consequence then bearwolf recovering reached for his stabbing knife heed mightily down hacked the dragon in
halfso daring drove out life F Ellen re and the King saw the last Triumph of his works in the world his wound burned and swelled the Bane boiled in his chest he walked away thinking sat down on aLedge and surveyed the old Earth allall wigl took water and washed his good Lord bathed away battle blood loosened hishelmet Keats talked about a poem writing and setting and I think that that is rather beautiful in beol as the poem proceeds there is the development of the central character of beol himself who comes on as a youngman A Brave Cowboy coming into town to win glory and as it proce Pro seeds to use of something else that Kei said he is an intelligence who is schooled by the Pains of the world into being asoul and I think something like that happens in the course of the poem and there is a beautiful uh transformation occurs from from Young Valor to Old intuitive sympathy and Virgil with say Lum the tears of things the
Explains where the poem may have been written down and closes with Beowulf's funeral and the poem's final praise of his character. The ending reflects on the poem's lasting power in modern English literature and culture.
Anglo-Saxon Melancholy merges with I think the whole European sense of tragedy and uh that that's what I loved about it we've almost reached the end of the tale but before that there's one last question where might the poemhave been finally committed to writing at the end of the 10thCentury the poem remember was originally composed in the anglian dialect of anglo-saxon but in the form that we've got it in that manual manuscript it's gone through a final versioning by a scribe writing in West Saxon and wherethat might have taken place the clues lie not in baywolf itself but in the other items in the manuscript in London the book of monsters Alexander's letter to Aristotle with its fabulous Tales of ant lions and weird tribesacross to the sunset the wonders of the East with its story of peoples whose heads were in their chests now there's only one Anglo-Saxon Monastery which is known to have possessed all the Latin sources for those stories and
it's this one Momsy in Wilshire on the borders of wessix and Mercier a place with an ancient long tradition of vernacular and Latin poetry in a lot of which there's a healthy interest in dragons too and if Ihad to place a small bet I would guess that it was here that the story reached its final point in its long journey handed down from the mouths of the BS finally to the pen Of The Scribe it'sa miracle it survived like all of anglo-saxon poetry it's astonishing to think that the very root of our literary Heritage only just got through the faded ink the singed Vellum the crumbling margins carrying the word horde down tous and the poem itself ends in Flames with beay Wolf's body taken to a headland by the sea in his gat Kingdom the Gat race then raised up a funeral P shining maale and shields of war and helmets
hung upon it they laid out in the middle the body of their Chief and on top there then kindled the biggest funeral fire The Roaring of flames mingled with weeping as the fire's Red Heart consumed the house ofbone Heaven swallowed the
smoke this was the manner of the mour of the gads they said he had proved of all kings in the world the gentlest of men the most gracious the kindest to his people the keenest for
fame so beay wolf lives and dies as a noble Pagan ancestor should but with virtue and imorality that his Christian descendants could admire he was a good King he was good coing who ruled wisely wisdom held eth Cenaand now in the 21st century with Wars on terror and clashes of civilizations the poem can still speak to us with its pagan humanism the refinement of its manners its generosity of spirit and it's in our voice thathowever great a distance it's ours speech ironical self-deprecating quite tough-minded and it's safe to say that the poem will be remembered as long as there's poetry in these islands until the dragon
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