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KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1883

2249

18

HARVARD COLLEGE

FEB 8 1889

LIBRARY

Prof. J. J. Whild.

BOU

(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

IN this edition I have endeavoured to remove some of the blunders which disfigured its predecessor, but many, I fear, have escaped my notice. Some parts have been entirely rewritten, and the passages formerly omitted as obscure or uninteresting have been inserted. Such as it is, the translation is now complete. A few notes have been added; and the introduction has been materially altered and, I hope, improved.

The Anglo-Saxon diphthong ca is so liable to mispronunciation when reproduced in modern English, that I have thought it better to strike out the e in such names as Healfdene, etc. Halfdene is at any rate nearer the true form than Heelfdene, as he ran some risk of being called.

The lines of the original poem are given at the top of each page.

vi

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

An autotype of a page of the manuscript (on a reduced scale) faces the title-page of this volume. It contains lines 1354-1377 (see p. 65), and reads thus in Heyne's edition of 1873:

næfne he was mára ponne ænig man óðer
pone on geár-dagum Grendel nemdon
foldbúende: no hie fæder cunnon
hwæðer him ænig wæs ær ácenned
dyrnra gásta. Hie dýgel land
warigeað, wulthleoðu, windige næssas,
frécne fengelád, pær fyrgenstreám
under næssa genipu niðer gewiteð,
flód under foldan. Nis pæt feor heonan
mílgemearces pæt se mere standeð,
ofer pæm hongiað hrinde bearwas
wudu wyrtum fæst wæter oferhelmað.
Þær mæg nihta gehwæm niðwundor seón
fýr on flóde; nó pæs fród leofað
gumena bearna pæt pone grund wite:
peáh pe heað-stapa hundum geswenced
heorot hornum trum holtwudu séce
feorran geflýmed, ær he feorh seleð,
aldor on ófre, ær he in wille

hafelan [hýdan]. Nis pæt heóru stóv:
ponon ýðgeblond up ástígeð
won to wolcnum, ponne wind styreð

láð gewidru óð fæt lyft drysmað
roderas reótað. Nú is ræd gelang
eft æt

INTRODUCTION.

IN the beginning of the last century Humphrey Wanley, who was employed by the great AngloSaxon scholar Hickes to make a catalogue of all the Anglo-Saxon MSS. to be found in the kingdom, discovered in the library of Sir Robert Cotton a volume containing, with other things, a 'tractatus nobilissimus poetice scriptus '-the poem of Beowulf. This is the only MS. of the poem in existence, and it is now with the rest of the Cottonian MSS. in the British Museum. It is a parchment codex, written probably in the tenth century, the transcript of a work composed at a much earlier date. It was injured by a fire which in 1731 consumed a part of the Cottonian Library, but the damage done, though irretrievable, happily does not go far. After this mishap it slumbered undisturbed until

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