The Count
Counting time. Fair warning, this is a full summary, so it spoils everything, the ending too.
Three famous fights carry the whole reputation of this poem. A monster in a hall. The monster’s mother, under a pool. And a dragon at the end of a hero’s life. How much of the poem do those fights actually take?
The answer is three hundred and sixty-seven lines, out of three thousand, one hundred and twelve. That is about twelve percent. The other eighty-eight percent is feasts, gifts, songs, speeches, and a funeral.
The plan is a map, the three fights one at a time, a ledger of who gives what to whom, and the last forty-five lines. Every count on screen is mine, from the text.
Which Translation
The translation I read is by J. Lesslie Hall, and the title page says so. It names him as a professor of English and history at the College of William and Mary. The title page dates the book eighteen ninety-two, and I checked that year against a second source.
It is free on Project Gutenberg, ebook number sixteen thousand, three hundred and twenty-eight. It is verse, and Hall’s preface says he kept the four beats of the old lines and used plenty of alliteration, on purpose.
So the lines are his own. When I say line, I mean a line of Hall’s, and a section is one of his forty-three Roman numeral sections. I read every section of the poem, and counted the lines from the book’s own markup. Only about twenty-six thousand of the file’s thirty-nine thousand words are the poem. The rest is his introduction and notes.
One more honest limit. Hall calls the poem Anglo-Saxon, but I am not giving you a date or an author, because I could not source those twice.
The Map
Here is the poem as a map. Three places matter. Heorot, the great hall of Hrothgar, king of the Danes. A haunted pool on the moors, home of Grendel’s mother. And a burial mound by the sea, in the land of the Geats, where a dragon sleeps on its gold.
Two fights happen in Denmark, when Beowulf is a young visitor from over the sea. The third happens at home, when he has been king for fifty winters.
Now the poem in five parts. The first two sections, one hundred and sixteen lines, are a king’s funeral and the building of Heorot. Sections three to nineteen are the Grendel story, eleven hundred and twenty-three lines, thirty-six percent.
Sections twenty to twenty-seven are Grendel’s mother, six hundred and twenty-three lines. Twenty-eight to thirty-one are the trip home, three hundred and twenty-three. Thirty-two to forty-three are the dragon, nine hundred and twenty-seven. I drew those borders by what each section is mostly about, so that part is my judgment. The counts are exact.
Fight One: Grendel
Grendel is a pest before he is a fight. Section three says he haunts Heorot for twelve winters. On his first raid he drags off thirty of Hrothgar’s thanes. The king’s people pray for help, and nothing helps.
Beowulf, a Geat, hears about it and sails with fourteen companions. In section seven, Hrothgar says sailors claim his grip is worth thirty men. Beowulf promises to fight with no sword at all, because the monster uses none.
Before the fight comes a sneer. Unferth, one of the king’s men, says Beowulf lost a swimming race to a man called Breca. Beowulf says he killed nine sea monsters on the way.
At night Grendel tears the door open and eats one sleeping warrior. Then he grabs Beowulf, and meets a grip stronger than any he has known, says section twelve. In section thirteen Grendel’s shoulder bursts, and he runs to the fens to die.
Count it. From Grendel at the door to Grendel running is one hundred and nine lines, three and a half percent of the poem, and Beowulf takes no wound. Then the poem spends four hundred and twenty-three lines on the morning after. The arm hung from the roof, the king’s thanks, the gifts, and a long song about a feud at Finn’s hall.
Fight Two: The Mother
The first fight was not the end. The next night Grendel’s mother carries off Aeschere, Hrothgar’s closest adviser, while Beowulf sleeps in another building. Hrothgar describes her home, a haunted pool where a deer chased by hounds would rather die on the bank than go in.
Beowulf borrows a sword called Hrunting from Unferth, the man who sneered at him. Then he dives. Section twenty-three says it takes a whole day to reach the bottom. She drags him into a cavern, he strikes her head, and the poem says the sword would not bite. It was the first time it had ever failed.
He throws it down and trusts his hands. She throws him and sits on him with a knife, and only his armor saves him. Then he sees a giant’s sword hanging among the treasure, too big for any other man, and cuts her down with it. He finds Grendel’s body and cuts off the head, and the blade melts like ice, leaving only the hilt.
On the shore the Danes give him up at the ninth hour and go home. His own men stay. It takes four men to carry Grendel’s head to the hall, on a spear. Count it. From the dive to the head is ninety-seven lines, the shortest of the three fights. The morning after runs two hundred and ninety-one.
The Gift Ledger
Now the part most summaries skip. Beowulf is a poem about giving, so I kept a ledger of fourteen gifts and payments between named people. In section sixteen Hrothgar gives Beowulf a gold banner, a helmet, mail, a sword and eight horses. In section nineteen his queen, Wealhtheow, adds arm rings, mail, and the greatest collar the storyteller has heard of.
Beowulf receives six of the fourteen and gives five. He hands the giant sword’s hilt to Hrothgar. He gives a gold-bound sword to the guard at the shore. At home he gives his king Higelac the banner, helmet, mail and sword, and the queen Hygd the necklace Wealhtheow gave him.
In return Higelac gives Beowulf an heirloom sword that was his father’s, seven thousand, in Hall’s words, and a manor and lordship. At the very end, dying, Beowulf gives young Wiglaf his ring, helmet, collar and mail.
The poem keeps score of kings by their gifts. Heremod, the failed king in section twenty-five, gave no ring gems to his Danes. And when Wiglaf shames the deserters in section thirty-nine, one threat is that gift giving is over for their families.
I also counted words. Gold appears fifty-three times, jewels forty-eight, and treasure or treasures fifty-eight. That is one hundred and fifty-nine. Grendel is named forty-two times, and the dragon, drake or worm thirty-five. Treasure outnumbers monsters about two to one.
Fifty Winters Later
After the second fight the poem goes home. Beowulf retells both fights to his king, Higelac. Section thirty-one admits the Geats once thought him idle and sluggish. Then Higelac dies, his son Heardred is killed, and Beowulf rules the Geats for fifty winters.
The dragon has guarded a hoard in a mound for three hundred winters. The last survivor of some old people buried it there, with a lament. A runaway servant steals one cup, to win back his master’s favor. The dragon notices. That night it burns the land, including Beowulf’s own hall.
Beowulf orders a shield made of iron, because wood burns, and refuses to lead an army. He takes eleven companions, and the thief, forced to guide them. With Beowulf himself, that makes thirteen. On the cliff he remembers being raised by King Hrethel from the age of seven, and one brother killing another by accident with an arrow. Then he makes his last boast, and tells his men to wait while he does it alone.
Fight Three: The Dragon
Here is where each fight starts, counted in lines. Grendel’s at seven hundred and eight, under a quarter of the way in. His mother’s at fourteen seventy-five, nearly half. The dragon’s at twenty-four ninety-one, four fifths of the way through.
Beowulf shouts under the stone arch, and the dragon’s breath comes out first. His sword fails him. His companions run into the forest. Only Wiglaf stays. He remembers the gifts and the vows made over mead, and runs in through the smoke, saying he would rather burn than go home without his lord.
Then the second sword breaks. Naegling, Beowulf’s old sword, shatters on the dragon’s head, and the poem blames his hand, too strong for any blade. The dragon bites his neck. Wiglaf stabs it and burns his hand, and Beowulf draws a knife and cuts the dragon in the middle.
Count the swords. Hrunting failed in section twenty-three. The giant sword worked, then melted. Naegling shattered in section thirty-six. What finally kills the dragon is a young man’s blade and an old man’s knife. This fight is one hundred and sixty-one lines, the longest of the three, and the only one Beowulf does not walk away from.
The Last Forty-Five Lines
Beowulf dies at the end of section thirty-eight, eighty-nine percent of the way through. The poem keeps going for three hundred and fifty more lines. The ten men who ran come back from the thicket, ashamed, and Wiglaf tells them death is better than a life of shame. Then a messenger warns of coming wars with the Franks, the Frisians and the Swedes.
Wiglaf takes seven men into the cave. They carry out the hoard and push the dragon, fifty feet long, over the cliff into the sea. Then comes section forty-three, the funeral, just forty-five lines. A pyre hung with helmets, shields and mail. A mound that sailors can see from far away, built in ten days.
And the whole hoard goes into the mound. The poem says the gold lies in the dust, as useless to men as before. Then twelve chiefs’ children ride around it, mourning him. The poem began with a funeral too. In section one a king named Scyld is laid in a ship with weapons and jewels, and sent out to sea.
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. Beowulf is less a monster story than a poem about what a king owes his people, and what it costs. The monsters take twelve percent.
If you want to try it, start with sections twenty-three and twenty-four for the best fight, then thirty-eight to forty-three for the ending. Hall’s verse is old-fashioned, so skim without guilt. That is my pick, not a rule.
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