The Social and Dramatic Functions of Oral Recitation and Composition in Beowulf

Oral Tradition, 17/2 (2002): 310-324

The Social and Dramatic Functions of Oral Recitation and Composition in Beowulf

John M. Hill

In Beowulf, the first moments of harp-accompanied joy in the hall

afflict an ominous outsider (86-90a): 1

˜a se ellengæst earfo∂lice

πrage geπolode, se πe in πystrum bad,

πæt he dogora gehwam dream gehyrde

hludne in healle; πær wæs hearpan sweg,

swutol sang scopes.

Then the bold demon long and torturously

suffered great pain, he who in darkness abided,

that he every day heard joy,

loud in the hall; there was the sound of the harp,

the clear song of the scop [singer].

Rightly, we usually think of harp-playing, singing, and recitation—that is,

orally performed song or story generally—as an inherent part of life and

celebration in the hall. When life and joy die, so does the clear sound of the

harp. This elegiac point, to which we will eventually return, is prominent in

the final third of the poem. But for now, and throughout this overview of

occasions for song, harp-playing, and oral performance among the Danes,

we should note the formal, social, and dramatic perspectives afforded by the

Beowulf poet’s use of harp-accompanied song in the hall. We are always in

complex, emotionally fraught, and even sometimes ominously suggestive

circumstances—no more so than in the very first mention of hall-songs, of

repeated joy that aurally and mentally pains a creature of darkness.

The kind of song here apparently sung daily is a creation song, recited

by a knower, by someone who knows the origins of things. This singer is

1 All citations from Beowulf are to Friedrich Klaeber’s third edition (1950),

with macra deleted.

ORAL RECITATION AND COMPOSITION IN BEOWULF 311

not named, nor is he given a social title such as “πegn.” He simply is

someone who knows, who reflects back to the beginnings of men and recites

or narrates or unfolds (“reccan,” 91b—a verb Beowulf uses later when

retelling events to Hygelac, saying it would take too long to recall the full

detail of his requital against Grendel [2093a]).

This singing about origins in Heorot is clearly part of a formal

occasion: the triumphant completion and dedication of the great hall, a hall

dedicated to the sharing among young and old alike of all that God has given

Hrothgar (excluding the lives of men or the open commons or public lands).

An account of the Almighty’s creation of the bright earth surrounded by

water, of the sun and moon, of flora and fauna of all kinds—this fittingly

mirrors the human creation wherein all is good, shared, and joyful. Thus the

passage establishes the highest of formal moments, perhaps almost a sacral

moment, for song in the hall keyed to a great social event. Yet not all the

world is in tune. What we learn here is that hall joys, song and recitation

especially, have their atmospheric place in great social moments. They no

doubt participate in various levels of formality—indeed some half-line

collocations of scop and sang may register that formality formulaically,

signaling a social ritual (cf. 90a, 467b); yet those instrumentally

accompanied joys of saying and performance are inherently changeable,

dramatic expressions of the social moment. They can have both hoped-for

and unlooked-for consequences.

Grendel’s nighttime carnage in Heorot effectively silences the harps

and lyres, along with the singing voices of men. But even here sad tales

(gidd, 151a) of Hrothgar’s dozen miseries—twelve years of Grendel’s

criminal, unyielding depredations—circulate widely among men. While the

meaning of gidd is narratologically amorphous in Anglo-Saxon times, in

Beowulf a gidd could well be a memorized composition.2 And in the

cases of those tales circulating about Grendel’s bloody crimes in Heorot,

giddu convey fact, however elaborated here and there from performance to

performance. Those tales eventually reach the Geats and Beowulf, who,

when he learns of Grendel’s long perpetuated, loathsome doings,

immediately commands the building of a good ship and says that he will

seek out the Danish king inasmuch as he has need of men (194-201).

Beowulf credits absolutely the tales he hears as narratives of a terrible truth.

His unsummoned arrival among the Danes meets several diplomatic

challenges: the coast watch, Wulfgar, and then Hrothgar. The king’s

2 Anne Klinck (1992:245) thinks of gidd as cutting across our ideas of “song

and speech, fact and fiction, prose and verse,” and John Niles (1999:208-12) provides

references, along with further critical reflections upon Klinck’s overview.

312 JOHN M. HILL

challenge is an invitation to a feast where Beowulf might further speak his

mind as matters occur to him. This is not a casual invitation to an especially

royal picnic. Rather it supposes a formal moment as Beowulf sits down and

a scop sings bright-voiced in Heorot in response to this promising warrior’s

advent from abroad, perhaps for the first time in twelve years: “Scop hwilum

sang / hador on Heorote” (469b-70a). This social ritual, revived now in

Heorot, momentarily at least suggests the solidarity of Danes and Geats in

what is still a preliminary movement on Beowulf’s part toward the task he

would have Hrothgar grant him—the chance to purge Heorot of Grendel.

What happens next further strengthens the case for an

“instrumental”—that is, more than decorative and merely celebratory—use

of harp and recitation in Beowulf. Unferth, son of Ecglaf, unbinds his battle

runes and speaks in the most challenging, because insulting, way yet.

Although a new fitt (manuscript division) begins with notice of Unferth, I

see no reason to consider the preceding reference to bright singing and

warrior joy as merely terminal atmosphere. Here bright song is both the

pleasure it is and the drawing out of an unpleasant, powerful onlooker

(shades of Grendel?): Hrothgar’s prominent officer, who sits at the king’s

feet. Two instances do not, of course, make a social disposition, let alone a

rule. But I think they argue suggestively that song and recitation serve in

most cases as more than just local color marking a scene of celebration—the

expected sonic tapestry, as it were—in the poet’s dramatization of hall

scenes. They do not even have to be in the hall to function in several ways

at once.

Consider the Danes on horseback going to the mere’s edge and then

galloping exultantly back to Heorot after Beowulf’s great victory over

Grendel. On that occasion the mere, although welling with blood, is no

frightening or dispiriting place. For them it is a fit place for the

dismembered monster’s death—a place, so to speak, where hell can receive

her dishonored guest. As they ride away from the mere the Danes

apparently praise Beowulf’s deed, his glory. Their happy moan, mænan,

appears later in connection with Hrothgar’s scop when he speaks of Finn’s

sons (1067b). Such an utterance is often a complaint, a sorrowful speech in

Beowulf, perhaps even an elegy near poem’s end where the Geats would

fashion a wordgidd about Beowulf (3172a). But here it is sheer, kinetic joy

as the riders race back from the mere and pronounce the consequence of

Beowulf’s great deed—that surely under the heavens no shield-holder

anywhere is more worthy of kingdoms than he is; he has not belied his

martial appearance. This exuberant judgment, perhaps simply delivered in

excited speech rather than in spontaneously composed exclamations of glory

and stature, anticipates a much more formal oral composition. Hrothgar’s

ORAL RECITATION AND COMPOSITION IN BEOWULF 313

πegn (thane) is a man full of great stories, one who remembers many tales,

finds words, and binds them skillfully together in speaking of Beowulf’s

fame (867b-74):

Hwilum cyninges πegn,

guma gilphlæden, gidda gemyndig,

se ∂e ealfela ealdgesegena

worn gemunde, word oπer fand

so∂e gebunden; secg eft ongan

si∂ Beowulfes snyttrum styrian,

ond on sped wrecan spel gerade,

wordum wrixlan.

At times a king’s thane,

a man covered with glory, mindful of songs,

he who of many ancient tales

remembered much, one word found another

truly linked; the warrior again began

(about) Beowulf’s voyage with wisdom to recite,

and in skillful ways to tell a fitting tale,

in words varied.

Apparently he extemporizes the story (spel) of Beowulf’s deed and he joins

it to stories (giddu) he already knows about Sigemund and Heremod. His

performance here is a mixture, then, of oral composition and oral recitation,

the whole involving a complex stitching together of an antithetical tryptych.

That mixture, I think, is signaled for us by the difference between spel and

gidd. Although almost as generically amorphous as gidd, a spel need not be

a song or an alliterative tale; and more often than not in Beowulf it is a

grievous tiding. Yet in Beowulf it is always something new: here in the

thane’s artful construction, later in the sorrowful news of the mother’s

revenge, and later still in the messenger’s speech to the wise Geats awaiting

news of Beowulf’s combat with the dragon.

Appropriately, oral composition here occurs in an atmosphere of

triumph, even of kinetic joy. The king’s thane is an especially prominent

reciter and composer. Like the singer who knows the story of creation, he

knows many ancient narratives (ealdgesegen). Probably a warrior-poet, a

court poet, he composes a well wrought tale of Beowulf’s exploit, where one

word finds another truly bound. He also says all he knows about

Sigemund’s glorious monster-slaying, in later contrast to Heremod, who is

in turn contrasted briefly with Beowulf. We have no paraphrase of the spel

of Beowulf’s adventure; yet the focus on how well one word “found” or

prevailed upon or is obtained from another (effects implicit in findan)

314 JOHN M. HILL

suggests the high oral art of a wise composer devising a new tale.

Moreover, he demonstrates architectonic skills in linking Beowulf’s

adventure to Sigemund’s and then contrasting Heremod to Sigemund and

Beowulf to Heremod. The result is a three-part account of Beowulf in his

new status as a dear friend to all men and a potential ruler.

At the great, celebratory feast in a refurbished Heorot, impressive gifts

are given to Beowulf and others to his surviving Geats. After that

distribution the poet mentions Grendel’s evil, that he would have devoured

more Geats had he been able, had not God and man’s courage stopped him.

Then the poet offers a sententious comment: anyone who long makes use of

this world in these days of strife will experience much that is dear and much

that is hateful. Following this we return to hall-joy among the Danes, as

though something of the poet’s tone has flavored the alcohol of Danish

memories. We learn that there was (1063-70)

. . . sang ond sweg samod ætgædere

fore Healfdenes hildewisan,

gomenwudu greted, gid oft wrecen,

∂onne healgamen Hroπgares scop

æfter medobence mænan scolde,

[be] Finnes eaferum, ∂a hie se fær begeat,

hæle∂ Healf-Dena, Hnæf Scyldinga

in Freswæle feallan scolde.

Song and music arose both together

for Hrothgar, the successor lord for Healfdene’s warriors.

The harp was touched, speech [gid] often recited;

Hrothgar’s scop the hall-joy

there among the meadbenches was set to speak

of the disaster that befell Finn’s sons,

(how) the hero of the Half-Danes,

Hnaef, hero of the Scyldings,

in Frisian slaughter had to fall.

Here song, music, and oft-told tales lead us into what is known as the

Finn episode, the consequences of which, while initially a disaster for Finn

and Hildeburh, are a Danish victory (Finn’s hall is sacked and Hildeburh, his

queen but the Danes’ princess, is brought back to her people). Here oral

performance in Heorot is hardly background music and recitation generally

suited to the occasion. A particular tale of marriage alliance that devolved

into sudden violence and feud suggests the portentous possibilities of any

moment of song-accompanied hall-joy. Songs and stories are not empty or

else stereotypical narratives; they carry with them the values, histories,

ORAL RECITATION AND COMPOSITION IN BEOWULF 315

hopes, and mixed victories of a social people in a harsh world. Again the

formal occasion opens up to sophisticated content and ambiguous

implications—to a suggestiveness in this case about which Beowulf scholars

have long contended. This essay is not the place for a review of those

contentions. I will simply refer the reader to my chapter (Hill 2000: 60-67)

on in-law feud in Beowulf for a summary of recent ways of understanding

the Finn digression generally and Hildeburh’s role or plight particularly.

The bedrock of my view is this: for all the grief and loss it recapitulates, the

gidd about disaster and Finn finally shapes a Danish victory, being

consonant then with the apparently somber hall moment, the celebration,

within which Hrothgar’s scop recites it.

This completes a survey of dramatically emphasized oral

performance, whether verbatim recitation or oral composition, in Beowulf.

Interestingly, there is nothing comparable in the great hall scene of

Beowulf’s homecoming, his account of the Grendel affair in Heorot, and his

rendering up to Hygelac of the splendid gifts Hrothgar gave him.

Transactions in Hygelac’s hall, while going well and ending in superb amity

between nephew and uncle, do not involve celebratory song, perhaps

because a great issue preoccupies Hygelac and Beowulf: the nature of

Beowulf’s possibly changed status and affiliations, now that he has served

Hrothgar twice. Moreover, we learn early on in the scene that Beowulf went

to help the Danes against Hygelac’s wishes. We and Hygelac need new

clarity about his continuing relationship to his mother’s brother, Hygelac,

and to Hygelac’s queen, Hygd. Thus the social occasion in Hygelac’s hall

informs against harp-accompanied joy and celebration, glad though Hygelac

is to see Beowulf again (he addresses him initially as beloved Beowulf,

“leofa Biowulf,” 1987b).

Still, Beowulf does mention that there was story and entertainment in

Heorot after Grendel’s defeat, as the friendly lord of the Scyldings rewarded

him with plated gold and many treasures, once they had set themselves down

in the morning to banquet (2105-14):

˜ær wæs gidd and gleo; gomela Scilding,

felafricgende feorran rehte;

hwilum hildedeor heorpan wynne,

gomenwudu grette, hwilum gyd awræc

so∂ ond sarlic, hwilum syllic spell

rehte æfter rihte rumheort cyning;

hwilum eft ongan eldo gebunden,

gomel gu∂wiga giogu∂e cwi∂an,

hildestrengo; hre∂er inne weoll,

πonne he wintrum frod worn gemunde.

316 JOHN M. HILL

There was song and glee; the aged Scilding,

well informed, from afar back recited;

meanwhile the brave one (struck) joy from the harp,

greeted the playful wood; at times he wrought a song

true and sorrowful; at times a strange tale

in rightful fashion, the large-hearted king recited;

at times again began, in age bound down,

an ancient warrior, to the youths began to speak

about battle prowess; his spirit inwardly swelled,

when he, in winters old, much recalled.

This passage more or less completes the banquet scene at this point in

Beowulf’s retelling of what happened. He moves on to nightfall and the

arrival of Grendel’s mother. Beowulf’s account here of several performers,

somewhat confusing in the actual number but involving at least two, one of

whom is Hrothgar himself, is the poem’s best instance of performance as

wallpaper, as background filling the foreground. What Beowulf would do

here is render the scene as innocuous as possible, clearly understating the

kinds of gifts he received (dynastic) and their purport (Hrothgar’s effort both

to adopt and recruit Beowulf). Rather he would have Hygelac imagine the

scene as largely filled at various times with a touched harp, with sad and true

story (gidd) recited from memory, and with strange, wondrous story (spel)

composed on the spot and unfolded according to the right way (“rehte æfter

rihte”). Doing that or else adding to the mix, Hrothgar at times spoke about

his youth and battle strength; his heart surged when, old in winters, he

remembered much.

For the moment, Beowulf has transformed the great banquet scene in

Heorot into a moody mix of story, song, and reminiscence. Again, his

motive is to underplay the mute force of Hrothgar’s splendid gift-giving, the

four most splendid being gifts that Beowulf will soon render up to Hygelac

in exactly the same order in which Hrothgar gave them to him. Beowulf will

announce that Hrothgar gave him these gifts into his own possession to use

as he wishes. He gives them to Hygelac in continuing favor and good will.

All my kindness, favor, and joy are still in your hands, Beowulf says; they

still depend upon you. He adds that he has no chief kinsmen except one,

Hygelac. This is precisely what Hygelac needs to hear—that Beowulf is still

an absolutely loyal, kindred-kind Geat, committed despite his two-part

service to Hrothgar and the Danes and despite the portentous honor of

Hrothgar’s dynastic gifts (the story of which Beowulf obliquely indicates

when presenting Hygelac with the corselet Hrothgar gave him).

ORAL RECITATION AND COMPOSITION IN BEOWULF 317

After Hygelac’s return gesture, beginning with his having Hrethel’s

gold-adorned heirloom, the best of swords in the Geat treasury, placed in

Beowulf’s lap and ending with the bestowing of seven thousand hides of

land, a hall, and a princely seat, one would expect now some hall

celebration. But this great moment has not followed a great victory nor does

it celebrate a founding or else inaugural occasion. Rather it has become a

marvelous manifestation of retainer-lord and great kin to greater kin amity,

the immediate outcome of which is a notable division of royal lands. This is

a high political outcome, a happy, public close to the hall scene, but

apparently no stimulus to song, harp-playing, or story.

Indeed, the only occasions for either new story (spel) or established

composition (gidd) in the poem’s last third are sad ones, beginning with

Beowulf’s account of the old man who has to live through a young son’s

riding upon the gallows. He can only mourn, lament: “πonne he gyd wrece,

/ sarigne sang” (“then he wants to recite a tale, a sorrowful song,” 2446b-

47a). When he looks upon his son’s dwelling some of the conventional

content of that lament becomes clear: there is no sound of the harp, no joy or

sport in the yard as there once was (2458b-59). All is stillness, a motif

keyed in part to the cessation of activity—play, sport, harptouching—

anticipated already in the lament of the last survivor, where

among other activities that are no more we find neither harp-joy, nor mirth,

nor play of the glee-wood (2262b-63a). The cessation of the harp marks the

end of joy and even life. The messenger that Wiglaf sends to the Geats after

Beowulf’s death tells his listeners that he now anticipates, among other

things, no harp music to wake the warriors in the mornings ahead. Rather

the raven will awaken them as it tells the wolf how it has stripped human

bodies of their flesh.

The messenger’s long speech is both a “new spel” and finally a

“hateful spel.” In being so it is a true tale and finally hateful, with very little

that is false in it. Presumably it is composed on the spot and so is a kind of

impromptu performance, despite containing no legendary content, no recall

of sad and true stories or strange tales, no origin myths, and no

reminiscences about anyone’s youth. Rather it combines accounts of past

feuds with Merowingians and Swedes in such a way as to prophesy their

renewal in the future, once news of Beowulf’s death circulates abroad. The

messenger’s is a kind of vatic performance, albeit rationalized in terms of

specific instances of feud and hostility rather than drawn from a deep vision.

The vatic possibilities for the poet in Norse tradition do not carry over to the

Anglo-Saxons generally or to the Beowulf poet (see Bloomfield and Dunn

1989:91-96).

318 JOHN M. HILL

A final reference to composition, again within a scene of lament, may

occur at poem’s end. There (3171-72a) the Geats want to utter sad songs

and speak of Beowulf. But the corruption of the passage is too great for

clarity. Still, if they do utter sad songs, these would be praise songs in an

elegiac mode, perhaps; they may even be songs that fill out the reported

superlatives with which the Geats honor their dead king—that he was,

among worldly kings, the most generous and fair-minded of men, to his

people the most supportive and kindred-kind, and the most eager for renown.

According to an Anglo-Saxon gnome in The Maxims, all men have

some longing, although this is less true for the one who knows many songs

and can work the harp with his hands (Krapp and Dobbie 1966:162, 169-71):

Longa∂ πonne πy læs πe him con leoπa worn,

oππe mid hondum con hearpan gretan;

hafa∂ him his gliwes giefe, πe him god sealde.

Longs then the less he who knows many songs,

or else with hands knows how to greet the harp;

has with him the gift of music, that which to him god gave.

Having this gift is consoling. The Beowulf poet apparently agrees, as he

removes moments of harp-playing, music, and celebratory story from the

increasingly elegiac last third of the poem. Oral performance is still

possible, indeed fitting near poem’s end in fixed praise of Beowulf (possible

in wordgidd, 3172b). While here the social context of story is all too

reduced to the functioning and consolation of lament, if we think of the final

superlatives as themes for their narratives of praise, praise that takes in

Beowulf’s kingship and bold works, that judges well his deeds, then we can

say that even here story and song of some sort contain the deep values of

these people, as they have come to condense those values into the

superlatives by which they, those hearth companions, speak of their lord.

Beyond this, for the Geats prospectively if the messenger anticipates rightly,

future mornings, while not bringing clear annihilation, will certainly require

movement and spear-held vigilance; the Geats will be cold and embattled;

and their morning songs will be those of ravens chillingly announcing the

previous day’s carrion feast. No more the harp, no more a bright hall—at

least not for a long time as, spear-armed, men and maidens move from place

to place (3016b-23a):

ne mæg∂ scyne

habban on healse hringweor∂unge,

ac sceal geomormod, golde bereafod

ORAL RECITATION AND COMPOSITION IN BEOWULF 319

oft nalles æne elland tredan,

nu se herewisa hleahtor alegde,

gamen ond gleodream. For∂on sceal gar wesan

monig morgenceald mundum bewunden,

hæfen on handa.

nor the maid glittering

have on her neck the worthy ring;

instead she shall, mournful of mind, deprived of gold,

often—not only once—tread a foreign country,

now that the leader of the army has laid aside laughter,

joy and pleasure. Therefore shall many a spear be

morning-cold, with hands wound around,

raised in hands.

For them there will be neither celebration nor consolation through the gift of

story, music, and song.

Addendum

While the images of the singer, reciter, and composer we can gather

from the poem suggest prominence at court, the poet is never more specific

than when calling the performer Hrothgar’s thane or Hrothgar’s scop. The

court scop may have sat at Hrothgar’s knee, although the only figure so

noted is Unferth and he is not said to be a scop. About the status of the late

Germanic court poets or the scop we in fact know very little. What evidence

we can gather, as Chadwick especially has done in The Heroic Age

(1926:ch. 5), tells us that certainly the maker of tales celebrating the exploits

and victories of great warriors and kings existed in Germanic societies. The

scop is something more than our high medieval minstrel or our later ballad

singer, something more or different from even the well-connected jongleur

in thirteenth-century northern France (see Baldwin 1997). Nothing of the

trivial or licentious entertainer hangs upon him individually or upon him as

the conduit of tradition (where, as John Miles Foley [1999:50] has

convincingly noted, some modern and classical singers situate themselves,

even invoking bardic lineages).

While, as Roberta Frank (1993) has wittily and devastatingly noted,

we have no extra-poetical testimony to the character and manner of an

actual, Anglo-Saxon singer, still in Beowulf, given its depiction of a

stratified society with wealthy lords and kings, a bard can be in a king’s

retinue, might in fact be a warrior, or might be so skilled, so laden with

320 JOHN M. HILL

vaunts and old stories, that he can specialize. As well as fighting, he can

make the fashioning of poems his service to the king, who will, if truly

noble, famous, and hoping for more, reward him. Ruth Finnegan (1977:170-

200) notes similar social functions for oral singers in different times and

places—although, globally, the social position of oral singers can vary

greatly from society to society and can be multifarious within a given

society. Many societies with chiefs or kings have court singers; many do

not. Where court singers exist, so might wandering or freelance singers. In

some societies singers form a special class and go through and control their

own training; in others nearly everyone is expected to show some skill at

oral song or narrative. In Beowulf, oral narrative and song may be separate

performances, but the knowledge involved does seem to be a specialist’s (as

with the creation singer and the thane who remembers many ancient

narratives). Hrothgar is said to recite, perhaps, but no other king does.

Rather a scop will, or a king’s thane, or someone who knows what to recite

and how. Special inspiration is not mentioned.

While the king or lord may also know how to recite, as Hrothgar

seems to, he can hardly sing his own praises and preserve his nobility

(except perhaps in a flyting, or verbal contest). The reward he gives the scop

who composes praise, then, would be for a task he can not assume himself.

That reward should be handsome, amounting to worthy gifts of rings, gold,

or land. In this respect the scop was or could become aristocratic—a hero

not of sword and corselet, or not of those alone, but of interlocked words,

having a facility for and a storehouse of vaunts, boasts, and ancient

narratives.

No doubt the court scop or singer, if the Old English poems Deor and

Widsith speak to this at all, could be a praise singer and both rise and fall in

favor. Although initially tied to a particular lord or court patron, such as a

queen, he might wander from land to land seeking out generous lords, kings,

and queens who would have their praises sung and who might like to hear

the praises of comparable men and noble women. These latter praises in

particular are the ways in which the scop, who never actually has to leave his

court, can travel vicariously and heroically: through the great stories of those

who have won renown for their prowess, their good customs, and their

generosity. To narrate is to know; to know many stories is to have power

and a kind of honor, an honor one can either confer or else withhold from

those who know less yet who desire something about themselves translated

into the truth of story. In this sense the scop’s gidd-hoard is both arsenal and

treasury—word-gold given for gifts in return or else withheld in implicit

blame and defacto defamation.

ORAL RECITATION AND COMPOSITION IN BEOWULF 321

Anthropological parallels abound but few seem very close to the

sparse evidence we have of the Anglo-Saxon court scop. Some singers can

acquire inheritance rights (cf. Irvine 1978) and others, at least in now

historically remote African societies, may have had no special status socially

and no particular power. Still, in some instances bards may have been

attached to or been part of the dominant family in the region (cf. Biebuyck

1972:261, 278).

Although operating, again, in a very different culture, a scop who has

anything like Widsith’s range can wield important social power given the

fame he can confer on particularly generous lords or kings. A king widely

sung and nobly compared to illustrious peers and figures of legend is one to

whom many retainers and would-be servants might come. For such a king, a

court scop is important enough to be an official, a man of rank and status. In

an honor society if rank can be achieved, it can always be undermined as

well, even lost. For the scop, though, one wonders how this happens? By

losing to a more skillful competitor? Perhaps the scop can take some kind of

umbrage and insult his lord in a satiric song, as seems the case at times with

Old Norse skaldic poets, most of whom come from notable families, and

some of whom sing their way into the service of and an advisory relationship

with a powerful chieftain or king (Hollander 1968:6-7). Or a retainer-scop

might be exiled for not fulfilling his service either at court or with sword and

spear, being thereby effectively replaced by others in all of his functions.

Certainly other retainers might become preferred for their greater qualities

and deeds. They might even receive gifts taken back from the previous

singer. Deor thinks this is unjust, especially in the case of a gift of land.

How does this happen? Is Deor’s successor in his lord’s affections someone

who came along with a more powerful mode of verse or a better hand on the

harp? Is he perhaps just more brilliant and cunning in his praises (punning

serially on cræftig [“powerful, crafty”] in leo∂cræftig [“song-powerful, –

crafty”]; Deor l. 40)?

These open questions, finally unanswerable, do however point to an

interesting issue. The court scop’s position in Heorot is never said to be

insecure; indeed, it seems almost majestical. This, however, is not the case

in either Deor or Widsith, where dependency seems the case as much as not.

The social instability sketched by the speaker in those two poems may

reflect a psychological instability, in that praise-power and the ability to

confer storied honor upon a lord are edgy matters. From the lord’s

perspective, some measure of one’s honor and fame is not in one’s hands;

rather one looks perhaps uneasily to another, to an inferior in some ways but

a superior knower in others. This situation can generate considerable

ambivalence on both sides, an ambivalence that might lead to the fate about

322 JOHN M. HILL

which Deor complains.3 Or else that ambivalence might generate enough

tension to spring the court poet, as it were, into an itinerant career, into

movement from court to court, as seems the case with the Widsith figure.

Indeed, in some South African tribes the praise singer can sing only certain

kinds of songs—entertainments, usually—in public ceremonials before the

king. Other and more intimate, perhaps even touchy, songs are sung in

camera, as it were, before a select group of family and advisors (Henderson

1990).

We can only with great hazard consider the Beowulf poet a court

singer like Widsith (Krapp and Dobbie 1966:iii, 149), not knowing whether

the poem celebrates any particular lord’s illustrious ancestors, mention of the

continental Offa notwithstanding. Certainly the poem does not especially

praise a given royal house, unless the quasi-Mercian, West Saxon

genealogical string that includes Beowulfian names tells us otherwise (as it

might: see Earl and Plummer 1965:66). Instead the Beowulf poet takes on a

cultural role for all Anglo-Saxon and perhaps also Anglo-Danish warriors,

lords, and kings who would hear of praise-worthy deeds performed by

illustrious ancestors (in the widest, northern sense). This is praise song

raised to the level of cultural myth, by means of which the Beowulf poet

would give word-gold to his Anglo-Saxon present—the gold of an

illustrious, noble, pregnant, and conflicted past. What might he receive in

turn? Fame, no doubt. Beowulf is, although sometimes inscrutable to us, the

most meditative and grand of Anglo-Saxon heroic narratives. The poet won

something by it simply in and of itself. For us the poem has become an

anonymously wrought, sometimes cold but always deeply moving memorial

for those who drive their readerly ships across the historical and cultural

darkness that surrounds it.

United States Naval Academy

3 That is, being replaced by Heorrenda, the land grant he held in exchange for

services going then to his laureate successor. However, Opland (1980:217) rightly

observes that we do not explictly see that transference taking place. Still, any land right

in this situation would not have been a personal matter; rather it would have been

something held in trust for as long as services were rendered or required.

ORAL RECITATION AND COMPOSITION IN BEOWULF 323

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