Of Beasts that Gloat and Plunder

The Twa Corbies, preparing to dine on the dead knight below, from “Some British Ballads,” 1919, by Arthur Rackham, (Wikimedia Commons).

At least twice, in the past thousand years (or so), a writer has observed that in war, men can act so much like beasts, that beasts themselves start to seem to act like men. The two writers include philologist and author, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the anonymous poet of a snippet of narrative poetry describing a battle fought in 991 C.E. Tolkien translated and provided explanations of the medieval Englishman’s words and then went further, writing an epilogue to that long-dead poet’s work for the stage. In it, Tolkien delves into themes and linguistic details from the poem by weaving them into his own writing. Gloating birds and wolflike men blend together in Tolkien’s The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth.

In a text so interested in the behavior of scavengers, the admonishment not to crow over an unjust killing stands out. Two loyal retainers of the proud earl Beorhtnoth search for his body among scores of English and Viking dead, an act necessitated after Vikings massacred Beorhtnoth’s English defense force earlier in the day in a battle known to us from history and the remnants of a narrative poem called The Battle of Maldon. The scene is eerie. Tolkien calls for the stage to remain in darkness other than the small light of a searcher’s dark lantern. The ground is covered in piles of men and severed limbs. The more timid searcher starts and calls out in fear repeatedly. His comrade offers cold comfort: “The wolves don’t walk as in Woden’s days…If there be any, they’ll be two-legged.”

The comment is prescient, as comments often are in dramas, and the heroes shortly find themselves in a struggle with plunderers, which ends with the timid man dispatching one of the graverobbers. He shouts his success and his companion chides him for responding too aggressively: “Why kill the creatures, or crow about it?” There are no literal crows in his text, but there are in The Battle of Maldon, and in his notes to the poem, published in June under the title The Battle of Maldon, Together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Tolkien responds to the appearance of the carrion birds, along with their typical brethren in Old English poetry, the eagle and the wolf.

Tolkien writes that ravens, eagles and wolves trailed armies and became particularly active on the eve of a battle. Their appearance together, in these circumstances in Old English poetry, is so common that the animals are referred to as “beasts of battle” and their mention before battles became formulaic in poems including any sort of large-scale fighting. Perhaps Tolkien noticed the human qualities the old poets gave the animals. In Aaron K. Hostetter’s translations, the wolf “chant[s] his warsong,” and is joined by the eagle in the poem Elene. The three animals “divide up the carrion” in The Battle of Brunanburh. The slaughtered dead are “a pleasure to wolves, a comfort as well to the slaughter-greedy birds” in Judith. The animals are “eager,” “greedy,” and “rejoice” in the bloodshed.

Of course, Tolkien had a favorite beasts-of-battle passage, and states that it is the Beowulf-poet who “really tunes his imagination on the conventional trappings” of the motif. Tolkien’s own translation of the passage, from his translation of Beowulf, runs thus: “Nor shall the music of the harp awake the warriors, but the dusky raven gloating above the doomed shall speak many things, shall to the eagle tell how it sped him at the carrion feast, when he vied with the wolf in picking bare the slain.” Here the animals reach their most anthropomorphized with the raven becoming the narrator of his own boastful story. The raven, eagle and wolf are in competition for the choicest bits. Returning to Tolkien’s character accused of “crowing” about killing the graverobber, it seems that Tolkien was interested in the semantic possibilities of the word crow, here in an idiom that suggests that crows are braggarts, as the Beowulf-poet suggested.

Wargs, Wolves and Criminals

Illustration from “Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf,” 1899 by Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin. (Wikimedia Commons).

Tolkien was also interested in the word wolf, particularly as it applied to wolfish men, and here also he seems to have taken some inspiration from the Maldon-poet, who describes the ravening Viking warriors as waelwulfas, or “slaughter-wolves” as they rush unheeding through the surf at Beorhtnoth’s assembled warriors. Recall also Tolkien’s character warning his comrade of two-legged wolves, which come in the form of English graverobbers, instead of Danish sea-pirates. However, as the Vikings arrived specifically to plunder the English coast and even offer to leave if paid off, is there much of a difference in motive between the Vikings and the native robbers?

It should be noted that waelwulfas, though literally means slaughter-wolves, conveyed the poetic meaning of warriors, and similar compounds meant to convey warriors can be found in other extant texts, such as heorowulfas, “sword-wolves” or “battle-wolves” used to describe pharaoh’s soldiers in the Old English version of the Exodus story. The word wulf itself was a popular name for men in Old English poetry and features in many compounds. Two men, Wulfstan and Wulfmaer, fight on the English side in “The Battle of Maldon.” Consider also Beowulf, perhaps the most famous -wulf of all.

Linguistic anthropologist and Tolkien aficionado Marc Zender suggested that Tolkien showed interest in the etymologies of the words crow and raven in his more popular fiction, The Lord of the Rings. In a lecture I attended at Harvard University in 2011, Zender pointed to Tolkien’s invention of a word for crow in Sindarin Elvish: crebain, a plural form from which close-readers of Sindarin can assume the unattested singular form, craban. For raven, the old Germanic languages have hrabn-, hrafn, and hraefn. Curiously, even though craban seems closer to the Germanic words for raven, Tolkien glosses the word as crow in English. Like the camp-following ravens of Old English poetry, Tolkien’s crebain take on a militaristic posture by traveling in “regiments.” Tolkien uses the word regiments twice to describe their movement, eschewing the English expression, murder of crows. The ominous birds appear in the chapter titled “The Ring Goes South,” in the second book of The Fellowship of the Ring.

The editor of Tolkien’s The Battle of Maldon, Together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Peter Grybauskas, also points out that Tolkien had an interest in the older forms of the word wolf, inventing warg from Old Norse vargr or Old English wearg, which are words that could mean wolf or human outlaw, or criminal. Tolkien’s wargs certainly seem inspired by the beasts of battle passages. In The Hobbit, the wargs work with the goblins and “shared the plunder” with them. The wargs speak a “dreadful language” and, using human-like ingenuity, set guards below the company of dwarves in the tree before Gandalf frightens them off in the chapter titled, “Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire.”

Finally, Tolkien himself suggests a direct link between the gloating raven of Old English poetry and birds of the folk tradition that brings us the ballads, “Three Ravens” and “Twa Corbies,” including this stanza:

Twa Corbies

Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane

And I’ll pike out his bonny blue een,

Wi’ ae lock o’ his gowden hair

We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.

The songs are about crows or ravens discussing the eating of a knight and seem to relate to one another in that they both refer to the knight’s hawks, hounds and lady, who in “The Three Ravens” version protect the knight’s body, but in the “Twa Corbies,” have abandoned his body to the crows.

Statue of Byrhtnoth in Maldon, made by John Doubleday. The text of The Battle of Maldon refers to the doomed leader by the West Saxon spelling in which the only existing manuscript of the poem is written. Tolkien amended the spelling to Beorhtnoth to reflect the East Saxon dialect that scholars believe the poem was originally written. (Source: Wikipedia.)

But in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth and in history, the doomed earl is not left to scavengers. In the manner of Tolkien’s more famous work, loyal and loving followers stand by his side to the death and even after. The two men retrieve Beorhtnoth’s body from the pile of corpses that cover him. He lies beneath the men who fought first to support him, then avenge him, and the Viking dead they took with them. The searchers carry his heavy bulk to a wagon bound for the monks who will tend to him, and lay him to rest, singing over his bones. Evil men and beasts exist in Tolkien’s works, but they are often overcome by loving friends, who fight on when hope seems dimmest. In this they embody the most famous quote from The Battle of Maldon, a speech by an aged servant determined to fight to the death to stand with his leader: “The mind must be harder, the heart braver, courage greater, as our might diminishes.”

In Practical Mythology, Ben Hellman writes about the intersections of society, art and folklore. If you know of a story that suits Practical Mythology, email the idea to newenglandbard@gmail.com.

One Sad Woman; Reclaiming Hildeburh’s Tale from her Men

“The lady lamented, sorrowed with songs...the greatest fire of the slain, roared before the mound” (Beowulf, 1117-1120; Benjamin Slade translation) (Photo of Lewes Bonfire Night Celebrations, Wikimedia).

Amidst the trolls, sea monsters and dragon, it is a story of an ordinary woman that stands out as the poignant tragedy of Beowulf. Her name, Hildeburh, will not be recognized unless you’ve made a study of the parts of the story that are backgrounded to that of the great hero who fights monsters. That said, her story, of a woman who dedicates herself to the stability of her family only to watch the men in her life literally burn it to the ground in front of her, will resonate with many. As the poem relates with typical Anglo-Saxon understatement: “that was one sad woman.”

Hildeburh (I always pronounce this Hilda-burra, though I’ve heard her called Hilda-borg) is a figure in a tale performed at Hrothgar’s mead hall after Beowulf kills Grendel. She gives everything to the men in her life and they take everything away from her. Like Hrothgar’s queen, Wealtheow, Hildeburh is a peaceweaver, a princess bound in marriage to the son of an enemy tribe in the hopes of ending generational blood feud. Danish Hildeburh marries a Frisian king and the two are together peacefully long enough to have at least one son, who seems to be fostered with Hildeburh’s Danish brother. Violence breaks out when Hildeburh’s brother comes to visit with her son and a troop of Danish warriors. The details are hazy as to what starts the conflict, but men of the Frisian king attack the visiting Danes while they sleep. The Danes are able to hold off their attackers, but Hildeburh’s brother and son are killed, along with enough men on either side to force both into a stalemate. Furthermore, in what strikes me as an excellent concept for a reality television series, winter forces the two sides to live together for months.

Thijs Porck’s comic of Hildeburh’s story “The Freoðuwebbe and the Freswael: A Comic Strip Reconstruction of the Finnsburg Fragment and Episode” is the only image of the story that I’ve found online that refers to the character Hildeburh. Porck’s title cleverly uses the Old English words freoðuwebbe and Freswael for peaceweaver and the Frisian slaughter, which alliterates and indicates Hildeburh’s central role in the story.

The set piece of this story is the funeral pyre after the battle. It is, for me, the great symbol of the futility of blood feud in Beowulf. Dane and Frisian bodies are piled high, including the queen’s brother and son. It is also the only poetic description of a funeral pyre I have ever read: “Heads melted, the wound-gates burst open, then blood sprang out from the hate-bites of the body, the blaze swallowed all up” (1120-1122). In a moment that foreshadows the unnamed keening Geatish woman who mourns Beowulf’s death, Hildeburh sings her sorrow, watching her loved ones burn. But the story doesn’t end there. The surviving warriors are forced to overwinter together, swearing fealty to the Frisian king, an arrangement that must have humiliated the Danes, who survived their leader, the queen’s brother. Peace lasts as long as the frozen harbor traps the Danish ships. When the Danes can finally escape Frisia, they seek revenge, killing Hildeburh’s husband and pillaging his hall, taking everything of value, including Hildeburh, back to their lands. The text does read as if Hildeburh, the character who loses her husband, brother and son in the conflict, is an object to be carried off.

More of the story is told in a separate text, only a fragment of which has survived. It is told from the perspective of the Danes, just as they discover that an enemy has come to slaughter them in their sleep. This version can be described as heroic, as opposed to the tragic version told in Beowulf. It is full of rousing speeches and vows. Beowulf scholars refer to the two versions of the story as the episode (in Beowulf) and the fragment, but in a nod to the male-centric history of Old English scholarship, both stories center Hildeburh’s husband Finn even though Finn is not foregrounded in either of the versions of the tale. Therefore we have the titles “Saga of Finn” and the “Fight at Finnsburg.” A study on the fragment and episode by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Alan Bliss, is called Finn and Hengest (Hengest was the headman of the Danes after Hildeburh’s brother Hnaef was killed in the initial bloodshed). Today's readers may recognize as painfully modern the Old English expectation that women put the needs of the family, or needs of the men in their lives before their own, and might feel the added insult that scholars have framed Hildeburh’s story as her husband’s.

John Howe’s cover art for Tolkien’s Finn and Hengest, the Frisian king and the headman of the Danes after Hildeburh’s brother is slain.

Finally, the story of the conflict between Hnaef and the aggressors who attack his men in the night is hinted at in the poem “Widsith,” that oblique compendium of old Germanic stories, boiled down to bare names in this case. Many of the names of figures mentioned in the fragment or the episode are clustered together in “Widsith,” which I have tasked myself with illustrating using Playmobil figures. The names in “Widsith” suggest an affinity to the fragment’s perspective of the story, of Hnaef’s heroic defense of his hall against attackers answering to Finn. Hildeburh is not mentioned, but I will remedy that in my Widsith Project illustrations.

Hildeburh’s story, as powerful as I find it, is surprisingly not known beyond Old English circles. It does not have a history of being illustrated or shared in its own right. An Internet search of any of the identifying names of the story brings up John Howe’s cover of the Tolkien book portraying two of the men in the fight and images related to other parts of Beowulf. There is also a comic strip by a Dutch scholar who probably discovered, as I have, that the story is complicated and difficult to tell because of the names and relationships. My desire to share lesser known stories from myth, legend and folklore make it a natural story for me to highlight in this blog and in my illustration project.

Widsith Project Progress

My 2018 shots of moments in “Widsith” that refer to the story of Hildeburh center the battle from the fragment because the characters mentioned in “Widsith” suggest that narrative. I present the marriage of Finn and Hildeburh (only Finn is mentioned, but I longed to include her); the moment when a warrior warns his nephew (a Jutish prince) against rushing to the front of the fight; the experienced warrior Sigeferth threatening the attackers; and Hunlafing sliding a sword to Hengest to seek revenge against the Danes.

I shot several scenes of the Hildeburh story in 2018, when I was trying to illustrate the “Widsith” line by line (rather than creating images for stories the poem alludes to). “Widsith” does’t mention Hildeburh, but I featured her in my shot of her husband Finn portraying their wedding. My website’s new platform for sharing stories individually will allow me to tell the story free from the constraints of the order of names mentioned in “Widsith,” but I will still have to square the information from the episode, the fragment and scholarly insights into figures mentioned in “Widsith.” The fragment tells a story of men fighting to defend a mead hall from attackers, with specific men defending doorways. This presented a unique challenge as I had relied on two-dimensional backdrop images of mead halls in other shots, but many of the moments I wanted to share needed to convey a fight that takes place between men in doorways. I tend to use as many existing set and prop pieces from the Playmobil world as I can, but I was not able to find Playmobil doorways that did the job very well. After researching images of reconstructed Viking longhouses and mead halls, (and many failed efforts to find a scale model I could just use without having to build something) I went to the large, local craft supply shop. I bought a number of panels and long pieces of balsa wood to start creating at least a doorway, but probably as much of the set as I need. I am not a modeler or a very confident crafter, and I don’t think like a designer so I tend to put my pieces in place and add or subtract elements until I have the shot I think tells the story. I have a sense that making storyboards could simplify my life, but if I was able to draw in any satisfactory way, I wouldn’t have to create three-dimensional dioramas to illustrate these stories.

Widsith Studios reborn!

After sitting in storage for two years, a casualty of buying a new home, I rebuilt my Widsith stage, and have brought my figures out to retell some of this “sad woman’s” story. My work on the mead hall elements of the story will take some time, but I will post updates on New England Bard's social media pages as the story unfolds.