No More Learning

{1d} A skilled minstrel. The Danes are heathens, as one is told
presently; but this lay of beginnings is taken from Genesis.

{1e} A disturber of the border, one who sallies from his haunt in
the fen and roams over the country near by. This probably pagan
nuisance is now furnished with biblical credentials as a fiend or
devil in good standing, so that all Christian Englishmen might read
about him. "Grendel" may mean one who grinds and crushes.

{1f} Cain's.

{1g} Giants.

{2a} The smaller buildings within the main enclosure but separate
from the hall.

{2b} Grendel.

{2c} "Sorcerers-of-hell. "

{2d} Hrothgar, who is the "Scyldings'-friend" of 170.

{2e} That is, in formal or prescribed phrase.

{3a} Ship.

{3b} That is, since Beowulf selected his ship and led his men to the
harbor.

{3c} One of the auxiliary names of the Geats.
{3d} Or: Not thus openly ever came warriors hither; yet. . .

{4a} Hrothgar.

{4b} Beowulf's helmet has several boar-images on it; he is the "man
of war"; and the boar-helmet guards him as typical representative of
the marching party as a whole. The boar was sacred to Freyr, who was
the favorite god of the Germanic tribes about the North Sea and the
Baltic. Rude representations of warriors show the boar on the helmet
quite as large as the helmet itself.

{5a} Either merely paved, the strata via of the Romans, or else
thought of as a sort of mosaic, an extravagant touch like the
reckless waste of gold on the walls and roofs of a hall.

{6a} The nicor, says Bugge, is a hippopotamus; a walrus, says Ten
Brink. But that water-goblin who covers the space from Old Nick of
jest to the Neckan and Nix of poetry and tale, is all one needs, and
Nicor is a good name for him.

{6b} His own people, the Geats.

{6c} That is, cover it as with a face-cloth. "There will be no need
of funeral rites. "

{6d} Personification of Battle.

{6e} The Germanic Vulcan.

{6f} This mighty power, whom the Christian poet can still revere,
has here the general force of "Destiny.