Beowulf's funeral

Anonymous

Beowulf (ca 11^th century)

Lines 3136-3172

 

The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf,

stacked and decked it until it stood foursquare,

hung with helmets,heavy war-shields

 and shining armour,just as he ordered.

Then his warriors laid him in the middle of it,

Mourning a lord far-famed and beloved.

On a height they kindled the hugest of all

 funeral fires: fumes of woodsmoke 

billowed darkly up,the blaze roared

 and drowned out their weeping,wind died down

 and flames wrought havoc in the hot bone-house,

burning it to the core. They were disconsolate

 and wailed aloud for thei lord's decease.

 A Geat woman too sang out in grief;

 with hair bound up,she unburdened herself 

of her worst fears,a wild litany 

of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded,

enemies on the rampage,bodies in piles,

slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke.

Then the Geat people began to construct

 a mound on a headland, high and imposing,

 a marker that sailors could see from far away,

and in ten days they had done the work.

It was their hero's momorial;what remained from the fire

 they housed inside it,behind a wall 

as worthy of him as thei workmanship could make it.

And they buried torques in the barrow,and jewels

 and a trove of such things as trepassing men

 had once dared to drag from the hoard.

They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure,

gold under gravel,gone to earth,

as useless to men now as it ever was.

Then twelve warriors rode around the tomb,

Chieftains sons, champions in battle, 

all of them distraught, chanting in dirges 

Mourning his loss as a man and a king.

 

Analysis

 

The title, which is “Beowulf's funeral”, suggests that the text is about the main character's burial; in fact these lines are taken from the conclusive part of Beowulf's poem, which is about the life and the deeds of a hero who lived in Scandinavia hundreds of years ago.

Looking at the layout, we can see that there's no rhyme scheme and that the metre isn't based on the number of syllables. The poem has probably an alliterative verse, that was often used by Anglo-Saxon poets.

The poem can be divided in three paragraphs; the function of the first one (that goes from line 1 to line 13) is to describe the building of the pyre where the body of king Beowulf is burned, just as he had ordered before dying: the Geat people make a blaze of four square metres decorated with heavy war shields, helmets and shining armour.

The king's funeral fire is huge and burns his body to the core, while the men are crying aloud for their lord's death.

The second paragraph goes from line 14 to line 19 and tells about a Geat woman who sings and weeps, expressing her desperation for the king's death and her fear due to the danger of an imminent invasion by enemies who are on the rampage, while they're crying the lack of their ruler.

In the third paragraph the narrator tells about the construction of Beowulf's grave, where the Geat people put what remains of their king from the fire.

The tomb consists of a big mound on the coast, a marker that sailors can see from far away, their hero's memorial. With Beowulf's ashes, they bury a treasure made of jewels, necklaces, jewels and gold, useless things in that period of sadness and desperation.

The text ends with an image that sums up the desperation of a people left without a strong leader: chieftains' sons mourning the loss of their king.

Looking at the connotative aspect, we can notice that every first half of a line is connected to the second half with an alliteration.

For example, the third line of the text says: “hung with helmets, heavy war-shields”; the line is divided in two parts by a comma and the repetition of the letter “h” at the beginning of the words “hung”, “helmets” and “heavy” connects these two parts.

An other rhetorical figure used by the poet is the kenning, which is a metaphorical name for something. We have an example of kenning at line 11, when Beowulf's dead body is called “bone-house”.

The poem is characterized by the use of only a verb tense, which is Simple Past, and the lexicon is mostly connected to war: the poet mentions the words helmets, shields, armour and enemies, that are connected to a military area. There are also a lot of words that underline the desperation that characterizes the situation in which the Geat people are left without their king (especially in the part where the Geat woman is described) , such as “mourning”, “weeping”, “disconsolate”, “wailed aloud”, “grief”, “worst fears”, “wild litany”, “nightmare and lament”, “slavery” and “distraught”.

I think that the poet has perfectly achieved his intent to show the dramatic nature of the text by using a series of adjective that underline the big respect that the Geats had for king Beowulf and the sadness and the desperation that are caused by his death.