Crist waer a cennijd
    Cyninga wuldor
    On midne winter: 
    Maere theoden! 
    Ece almihtig! 
    On thij eahteothan daeg
    Hael end gehaten
    Heofon ricet theard.

    Christ was born
    King of glory
    In mid-winter: 
    Illustrious King! 
    Eternal, Almighty! 
    On the eighth day
    Saviour was called,
    Of Heaven’s kingdom ruler.

PERIPHRASIS.—­Their periphrasis, or finding figurative names for persons and things, is common to the Norse poetry.  Thus Caedmon, in speaking of the ark, calls it the sea-house, the palace of the ocean, the wooden fortress, and by many other periphrastic names.

ALLITERATION.—­The Saxons were fond of alliteration, both in prose and verse.  They used it without special rules, but simply to satisfy their taste for harmony in having many words beginning with the same letter; and thus sometimes making an arbitrary connection between the sentences or clauses in a discourse, e.g.: 

    Firum foldan;
    Frea almihtig;

    The ground for men
    Almighty ruler.

The nearest approach to a rule was that three words in close connection should begin with the same letter.  The habit of ellipsis and transposition is illustrated by the following sentence in Alfred’s prose:  “So doth the moon with his pale light, that the bright stars he obscures in the heavens;” which he thus renders in poetry: 

    With pale light
    Bright stars
    Moon lesseneth.

With this brief explanation, which is only intended to be suggestive to the student, we return to Beowulf.

THE PLOT OF BEOWULF.—­The poem contains six thousand lines, in which are told the wonderful adventures of the valiant viking Beowulf, who is supposed to have fallen in Jutland in the year 340.  The Danish king Hrothgar, in whose great hall banquet, song, and dance are ever going on, is subjected to the stated visits of a giant, Grendel, a descendant of Cain, who destroys the Danish knights and people, and against whom no protection can be found.

Beowulf, the hero of the epic, appears.  He is a great chieftain, the heorth-geneat (hearth-companion, or vassal) of a king named Higelac.  He assembles his companions, goes over the road of the swans (the sea) to Denmark, or Norway, states his purpose to Hrothgar, and advances to meet Grendel.  After an indecisive battle with the giant, and a fierce struggle with the giant’s mother, who attacks him in the guise of a sea-wolf, he kills her, and then destroys Grendel.  Upon the death of Hrothgar he receives his reward in being made King of the Danes.