Beowulf––––––––
“He was of mankind
In might the strongest.”
- Longfellow’s Translation.
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Whether those who read it be scholars who would argue about the origin and date of the poem, ingenious theorists who would fain use all the fragmentary tales and rhymes of the nursery as parts of a vast jig-saw puzzle of nature myths, or merely simple folk who read a tale for a tale’s sake, every reader of the poem of Beowulf must own that it is one of the finest stories ever written.
It is “the most ancient heroic poem in the Germanic language,” and was brought to Britain by the “Wingèd Hats” who sailed across the grey North Sea to conquer and to help to weld that great amalgam of peoples into what is now the British Race.
But once it had arrived in England, the legend was put into a d
