TO THE HONOURED MEMORY

OF HIM

TO WHOM THORKELIN INSCRIBED

THE FIRST EDITION OF BEOWULF,

THE FRIEND OF RASK,

THE MUNIFICENT FOSTERER OF THE ANCIENT

LORE OF HIS NATIVE NORTH,

JOHN BÜLOW,

OF SANDERUMGAARD IN THE ISLE OF FYEN,

THIS PRESENT EDITION OF THE SAME POEM

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY

THE EDITOR.

PREFACE.

I

TWENTY-FOUR years have passed since, while residing in Denmark, I first entertained the design of one day producing an edition of Beowulf; and it was in prosecution of that design that, immediately on my arrival in England in 1830, I carefully collated the text of Thorkelin's edition with the Cottonian manuscript. Fortunately, no doubt, for the work, a series of cares, together with other literary engagements, intervened and arrested my progress. had, in fact, abandoned every thought of ever resuming the task it was therefore with no slight pleasure that I hailed the appearance of Mr. Kemble's first edition of the text of Beowulf in 1833a. Still a translation was wanting, and this was a few years later supplied by the same eminent Anglo-Saxon scholar, accompanied by a new and revised edition of the text, a copious and valuable glossary, and notes b.

a The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, the Traveller's Song, and the Battle of Finnesburh; edited together with a Glossary of the more difficult words and an Historical Preface, by John M. Kemble, Esq. M. A. of Trin. Coll. Camb. London, Pickering, 1833.

b

I. The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, etc. Second edition, 1835. 2. A Translation of the Anglo-Saxon Poem of Beowulf, with a copious Glossary, Preface, and Philological Notes, by John M. Kemble, Esq. Pickering, 1837.

Copies of Mr. Kemble's editions having for some time past been of rare occurrence, I resolved on resuming my suspended labour, and, as far as I was able, supplying a want felt by many an Anglo-Saxon student both at home and abroad. A plan was then to be adopted.

My first impulse was to print the text of the poem as it appears in the manuscript, with a literal translation in parallel columns, placing all conjectural emendations at the foot of each page; but, on comparing the text with the version in this juxta-position, so numerous and so enormous and puerile did the blunders of the copyist appear, and, consequently, so great the discrepance between the text and the translation, that I found myself compelled to admit into the text the greater number of the conjectural emendations, consigning to the foot of the page the corresponding readings of the manuscript. In every case which I thought might by others be considered questionable, I have followed the more usual course, of retaining in the text the reading of the manuscript, and placing the proposed correction at foot.

With respect to this the oldest heroic poem in any Germanic tongue, my opinion is, that it is not an original production of the Anglo-Saxon muse, but a metrical paraphrase of an heroic Saga composed in the south-west of Sweden, in the old common language of the North, and probably brought to this country during the sway of the

For when the poet (11. 35-38) says that the renown of Beowulf the Scylding was widely known in the Scanian lands (Scede-landum in), he evidently means that it had reached him at his own home in Skåne (Scania), the limits of which were then more extended than those of the modern province so called. Let us cherish the hope that the original Saga may one day be discovered in some Swedish library.