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The thematic significance of enta geweorc and related imagery in The Wanderer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

P. J. Frankis
P. J. Frankis
Affiliation:
The University of Newcastle
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Extract

Our uncertainty about the full implications for poet and audience of particular words and phrases is a serious obstacle to our understanding of Old English poetry. With regard to the final section of The Wanderer (73–115) some advances in our knowledge and understanding have already been made, notably by Professor J. E. Cross in his studies of the Latin antecedents of two passages: he shows that lines 80–4 use the motif of the Fates of Men, with the Old English sum … sum … structure translating the Latin alius … alius …, and that lines 92–6 are based on the ubi sunt topos of the transience of life. This information gives us a better grasp of the impact these lines may have had on an informed Anglo-Saxon audience and helps us to evaluate the poem; but many details still remain unclear. The present study is concerned with the context of these two passages (73–105), and in particular with the puzzling image of ‘the work of giants’ that has been destroyed by God (85–7).

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 2 , December 1973 , pp. 253 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

page 253 note 1 Cross, J. E., ‘On The Wanderer, lines 80–4’, Vetenskaps-Societetens i Lund Årsbok (1958–1959), 77–110Google Scholar and ‘Ubi Sunt Passages in Old English’, ibid. (1956), 25–44. An earlier draft of the present study was read to a research seminar at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1970, and it profited from the discussion on that occasion; at a later stage Professor Clemoes was most generous in suggesting further improvements.

page 253 note 2 ‘Thus the creator of men laid waste this place until, deprived of the revelries of their inhabitants, the old works of giants stood desolate.’ For all Old English verse quotations I have followed the text in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records.

page 254 note 1 ‘Then the prince went and sat on a seat by the wall, pondering deeply; he looked on the work of giants, how the stone arches, set firm on pillars, supported the eternal earth-building inside’ (2715b–19).

page 255 note 1 ‘The stone-work of the walls is wondrous: the fates broke it, the fortified places fell apart, the work of giants crumbles; the roofs are fallen in, the towers are ruined, the barred gate is plundered; there is frost on the mortar, the defence against the weather is gaping, torn and collapsed, undermined by age … Lichen-grey and stained red, this wall repeatedly endured one kingdom after another, still standing under storms’ (1–6a and 9b–11a).

page 255 note 2 For the identity of the ruins concerned see Three Old English Elegies, ed. R. F. Leslie (Manchester, 1961), pp. 22–8Google Scholar, and the works cited there.

page 255 note 3 ‘They dragged the bold-hearted man along the hill-passages [?], the strong-souled hero round the hillocks of stones, right as far as the roads extended, the ancient works of giants, the stone-adorned streets within the city. A storm arose among the courtyards of the town, a great outcry of the heathen host’ (1232–8a).

page 256 note 1 ‘He saw by the wall mighty pillars, wondrously firm, along the wall of the hall, columns standing, beaten by storms, the ancient work of giants’ (1492–5a).

page 256 note 2 ‘A king must hold his kingdom. The towns that are on this earth are visible from afar, the skilful work of giants, the stone-work of the walls is a wondrous construction. The wind is swiftest in the air; thunder, when it occurs, is the loudest noise’ (1–4a).

page 258 note 1 See Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, ch. 42. The wall was made of large rough stones: ‘en of nætr dró harm til grjót a hestinum, en þat þótt ásunum mikit undr, hversu stór bjǫrg sá hestr dró’ (‘and by night he got the horse to pull stones, and it seemed a great marvel to the gods what huge rocks that horse pulled’); and the builder is referred to as smiðr, ‘a smith’, and later as jǫtutnn, ‘a giant’, and bergrisi, ‘a mountain-giant’.

page 258 note 2 See Saxonis Gesta Danorum, ed. Olrik and Ræder (Copenhagen, 1931), p. 9Google Scholar (Praefatio, ch. 3, 1–9); I am indebted to my colleague, Mr R. Bailey, for this reference.

page 259 note 1 See Pauly, , Realenz yklopädie der classischen Altertumswissenscbaft (1921) XIGoogle Scholar, col. 2528, and Roscher, W. H., Lexikon der griechischen und römiscben Mytbologie (Hildesheim, 1965) 11Google Scholar. 1, col. 1676ff., s.v. Kyklopen.

page 259 note 2 E.g. Description of Greece 11 (Corinth).xvi.5 (Loeb Classical Library (London, 1918–1935), 1, 330Google Scholar), referring to the Lion Gate of Mycenae; II.XXV.8 (Loeb 1, 382) and VII (Achaia).xxv.6 (Loeb III, 322), referring to Mycenaean Tiryns; in VIII (Arcadia).xxix.2 (Loeb IV, 48) the Cyclopes are classified together with the race of giants (as also later in Isidore, Etymologiae, XI.iii.12–16).

page 259 note 3 Seneca, , Hercules Furens 997Google Scholar, and Pliny, , Natural History VII. 195–7Google Scholar; in modern English (as in other European languages) the word ‘cyclopean’ has been used to refer to ancient stone buildings (see OED, s.v. cyclopean 2), presumably beginning as a learned reference back to Pausanias or other Greek writers.

page 259 note 4 Geoffrey, of Monmouth, , Historia Regum Britanniae, IX. 15, ed. Griscom, A. (London, 1929), p. 461Google Scholar; Geoffrey's account of Stonehenge as the work of giants (VIII. 10–12) is of interest here, especially his peculiar story that the stones were used in connection with medicinal baths; it almost looks as if he were confusing an account of Stonehenge as the work of giants with a tradition of Roman baths as the work of giants (cf. The Ruin 38–41 and the ensuing fragmentary lines).

page 259 note 5 ‘The king summoned them all to himself in a stone tower of his that was called the Gigantic Tower’ (Le Roman de Brut de Wace 10729–30; ed. I. Arnold (Paris, 1938–1940) 11, 561Google Scholar; I have followed the same editor's later text in La Partie Artburienne du Roman de Brut (Paris, 1962), p. 96).Google Scholar

page 259 note 6 Layamon's Brut 24885–6; ed. Madden (London, 1847) 11, 623Google Scholar; I have followed the text of Selections from La???amon's Brut, ed. G. L. Brook (Oxford, 1963), p. 103Google Scholar (line 3569). Lawman refers to Stonehenge (see above, p. 259, n. 4) as eotinde ring (Madden 17275; Brook, Selections 908).

page 260 note 1 Burrow, J., N&Q 210 (1965), 166–8.Google Scholar

page 260 note 2 ‘… when the flood, a pouring deluge, slew the race of giants’ (1689b–90).

page 260 note 3 The sword from Grendel's lair is referred to as enta œrgeweorc (1679a), but also as giganta geweorc (1562b) and ealdsweord eotenisc (1558a); the latter phrase is applied to other swords in 2616a and 2979a, appearing in the latter line together with entiscne belm. In general the eotenas are savage giants and the entas ancient craftsmen, and either may be referred to as gigantas. Perhaps the entas were thought of as a special kind of eoten, so that while eoten(isc) might be used as a variant of ent(isc), the reverse was not always possible. The classical associations of ent are also suggested by the fact that in two places where the Latin text of Orosius refers to Hercules (I.XV.7 and III.xix.2) the Old English version has Ercol se (þone) ent. In neither case does the word ent have any counterpart in the Latin text, and it presumably constitutes a commentary explaining that Hercules was an ancient hero of superhuman stature; see King Alfred's Orosius, ed. H. Sweet, Early English Text Society o.s. 79 (London, 1883), p. 46Google Scholar, line 30, and p. 132, line 11. The etymology of ent is unknown, and the cognate OHG enzo does not illuminate its semantic history.

page 261 note 1 Nos. 148–9; Migne, Patrologia Latina 100, col. 533.

page 261 note 2 The Old English Heptateuch, ed. S. J. Crawford, EETS 160 (London, 1921), p. 99Google Scholar. The other references are: De Vetere et Novo Testamento, lines 1179–80 (ibid. p. 70); Ælfric' s translation of Alcuin's Interrogationes Sigewulfi, ed. G. E. MacLean, Anglia 7 (1884), 40Google Scholar (line 379); the homily ‘In Die Sancto Pentecosten’, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: the First Part, containing the Sermones Catbolici, or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. B. Thorpe (London, 1844–1846) 1, 318Google Scholar; and the homily ‘De Falsis Diis’, The Homilies of Ælfric: a Supplementary Collection, ed. J. C. Pope, EETS 259–60 (London, 1967–1968), p. 680Google Scholar (lines 74–5). This last homily was adapted by Wulfstan, retaining the reference to giants; see The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. D. Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), p. 221Google Scholar. As noted by Professor Pope, Ælfric's ‘De Falsis Diis’ was translated into Old Norse, but the translation of the passage in question is closer to the bible, the Old Norse making no mention either of Nimrod or of giants, and referring to the builders of the Tower of Babel simply as ‘þeim monnum binum miclum er forðum varo’ (‘those mighty men of former times’); see Hauksbók, ed. Finnur Jónsson, Kongelige Nordiske Oldskriftselskab (Copenhagen, 1892–1896), p. 157Google Scholar, lines 23–31, Another text in the same manuscript (ibid, p. 153, lines 29–33) states that Nimrod the giant and other giants (‘Nemroð risi oc aðrer risar’) built a town with a tower in it, the town being called Babel, later Babylon.

page 262 note 1 Boethius, , De Consolations Pbilosopbiae, ed. Stewart, and Rand, , Loeb Qassical Library (London, 1918), p. 290Google Scholar: ‘You have heard in myths, she said, about the giants attacking heaven, but, as was proper, benevolent strength put them down too’ (111, pr. 12). For the Munich Commentary see Otten, K., König Alfreds Boethius (Tübingen, 1964), p. 129CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘here he refers either to pagan myth or to the historical truth of the division of languages’ (my translations). The comparison of the biblical story with the Greek myth is also made by Bede in his commentary on Genesis; see Bede, Libri quattuor in Prineipium Genesis, ed. C. W. Jones, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina I88A, 100.

page 262 note 2 ‘Now I know you have often heard related in false old stories that Jove, Saturn's son, was supposed to be the chief god over all other gods, and to be the son of Heaven and to rule in heaven; and the giants wore supposed to be the sons of Earth and to rule over earth, so they were like the children of a brother and sister, because he was supposed to be the son of Heaven and they of Earth. And then it was supposed to have occurred to the giants that Jove had their kingdom, and they wanted to burst open heaven under him; so he sent thunder and lightning and winds to cast down all their work, and to kill the giants themselves. They made up false tales like this, but they could easily have told the truth if these lies had not been more attractive to them; and yet the truth was very like these lies. They could have told how stupidly Nimrod the giant behaved … This Nimrod ordered a tower to be built on the plain called Nensar among the people called Deira, very close to the town we now call Babylon … But it came about, as was natural, that the divine power overthrew them before they could complete it, and cast down the tower, and killed many of them’ (King Alfred's Boethius, ed. W. J. Sedgfield (Oxford, 1899; repr. Darmstadt, 1968), pp. 98–9).Google Scholar

page 263 note 1 Bede, , In Princ. Gen., ed. Jones, pp. 144–5, 156–7 and 162Google Scholar; also PL 91, cols. 117–18 and 126–9.

page 263 note 2 No. CXLIX (omitted from Ælfric's Old English translation).

page 264 note 1 ‘It is unbelievable for anyone who is told of it how any man could construct such a town as Babylon was, or how it could afterwards be destroyed. Nimrod the giant first began to build Babylon, and King Ninus after him, and Semiramis his queen finished it after him towards the middle of her reign. That city was built on level and very even land, and it was very beautiful to behold; it is perfectly square, and the size and strength of the wall is unbelievable to hear of, for it is fifty ells thick, 200 ells high and its circumference is seventy-and-one-seventh miles; it is made of tiles and bitumen. Outside the wall is an enormous ditch in which the most immense river runs; beyond the ditch is a wall two ells high, and on top of the bigger wall stone turrets are built throughout the whole circuit. This same city of Babylon, which was the first and greatest of cities, is now the smallest and most desolate. The city, which was the most firm-set, marvellous and famous of all works, is now like a warning set up for the whole world, even as if it were itself able to speak and were to say to all mankind, “Thus I am now fallen and departed away: lo, you can look on me and recognize that you have nothing among you that is firm and strong and able to endure”’ (King Alfred's Orosius, ed. Sweet, pp. 74–5; I have followed the text in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader, rev. D. Whitelock (Oxford, 1967), pp. 27–8Google Scholar). Latin quotations are from Fault Orosii Historiarum adversum Paganos Libri VII, ed. C. Zangmeister (Leipzig, 1889), pp. 42–3Google Scholar. Orosius returns to the comparison of Babylon and Rome in VII.ii; the corresponding portion of the Old English translation in Sweet's edition is on p. 252.

page 265 note 1 ‘… and yet that great Babylon, the first city built after the renewing of the human race [i.e. after the flood] is now after a very short time conquered, captured and overthrown’.

page 265 note 2 Orosius's fascination with the size of the walls of Babylon is shared by other writers, e.g. Solinus, , Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium, ch. 56 (ed.Mommsen, (Berlin, 1895), p. 205Google Scholar) and Isidore, Chronicon 9 (PL, 83, col. 1022). In the foregoing sketch of Latin and English versions of the story of Nimrod and Babel it has not been relevant to quote the reference in Solomon and Saturn since this is too obscure to add anything to the other references, but it is appropriate to acknowledge my debt to R. J. Menner's studies of the legend in his edition of The Poetical Dialogues of Solomon and Saturn, Mod. Lang. Assoc. Monograph 13 (New York, 1941), 61 and 122–3Google Scholar, and in JEGP 37 (1938), 332–54Google Scholar, which have been the basis of all subsequent writings on this theme. Since the completion of the present article there has appeared Peltola, N., ‘Grendel's Descent from Cain Reconsidered’, NM 73 (1972), 284–91Google Scholar, in which it is suggested that references in Beowulf to weapons and armour as the work of giants may derive from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, and ultimately from Genesis IV.22.

page 266 note 1 Tertullian, Adversus Judaeos (PL 2, col. 620); trans. The Ante-Nicem Fathers, ed. Roberts and Donaldson (repr. 1957) 111, 162: ‘So again Babylon, in our own John (Revelation XVII), is a figure of the city of Rome, as being equally great and proud of her sway and triumphant over the saints.’

page 267 note 1 Alcuin, De Clade Lindisfarnensis Monasterii, ed. Dümmler, Monumenta Gennaniae Histories, Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini 1, 229.

page 268 note 1 Other collocations resembling those in the passages discussed above are in Andreas 827–43a; ceastre - berestrœte - burhwealle - stan - torras - windige weallas; and Andreas 1575b–80: stormas - stanbleoðu - carcern - strœt.

page 268 note 2 ‘In place of the beloved band of warriors there now stands a wall, wondrously high, painted with the figures of dragons [or serpents]’; for previous discussions of these lines see The Wanderer, ed. R. F. Leslie (Manchester, 1966), pp. 86–7, and ed. T. P. Dunning and A. J. Bliss (London, 1969), p. 74; and for detailed comment on the implications of fab see G. V. Smithers in Studies in language and Literature in Honour of Margaret Schlaucb, ed. M. Brahmer et al. (Warsaw, 1966), p. 417. OE wyrm had a wide semantic range, including ‘dragon’, the creature that haunts desolate places, whether the ruins of Babylon or an ancient burial-mound, and ‘worm’, the creature that devours bodies in the grave (as in The Rhyming Poem 75 and Soul and Body II 67–9, 106–7 and 111–21); this obviously allows for a good deal of flexibility in the use of wyrm as a poetic image.

page 268 note 3 The problem of The Wanderer 98b is intractable, but one should note that wyrm collocates more frequently with fab, ‘guilty, hostile’, than with fab, ‘painted, stained’: while the latter collocation is represented only by wyrmfab (Beowulf 1698a), the former occurs in fab wyrm (Genesis A 899a) and fagum wyrme (904b), weorm blœdum fab (Andreas 769b) and wyrm yrre cwom … fyrwylmum fab (Beowulf 2669–71a); cf. also BT Supplement, s.v. fagwyrm, ‘basilisk’. This does not lead to any improved interpretation of The Wanderer 98b, and there is likely to be some textual corruption here.

page 269 note 1 ‘She saw a hall standing far from the sun on Corpse-strand; the doors face north; poison drops fell in through the roof-vent; that hall is entwined with the backs of serpents’ (Edda, ed. G. Neckel (Heidelberg, 1962), p. 9). Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, ch. 52, interprets these stanzas as implying that the walls are woven (like wicker-work) with serpents, which blow their venom into the hall: this does not quite agree with the reference to lióra in Vǫluspá.