What a great video, Julie!

Nemo

As Eliot almost said, "It seems impossible to explain just what I mean."

Suppose we are discussing a story about a man known for his cruelty who has a collection of knives and the writer, in passing, drops the information that the man owns several dogs and each them has a very short tail.

And I say, "I wonder if the writer has specifically mentioned the dogs' short tails to draw attention to something. Writers don't (usually) waste words."

I'll bet a dollar to doughnut that the Spherical reaction would be, "Ho, ho, I've seen lots of dogs with short tails."

Or, "They might have been Giant Schnauzers."

Or, "Some dogs are born tailess."

Or "Some cats have short tails too."

Or "I had a dog when I was a kid and I was broken-hearted when our neighbor poisoned it. I cried for a week."

Or "I googled short-tailed dogs and found that there is a mutation in a gene called the T-box transcription factor T gene (C189G) which accounts for natural bobtails in 17 of 23 dog breeds studied, but not in another 6 dog breeds, for which the genetic mechanism is yet to be determined".

Or "Samuel Johnson said that a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on its hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all."

All of which proves that Sphere folks are natural-born writers and poets with wide-ranging imagination and immense creative talent.

OK, it was a raven, possibly from Scotland, but definitely a joyous, gentle, intelligent, and probably Christian, raven that woke Beowulf the morning he climbed on his longship and set sail for home.

Love ya all. :D

And 1150 years later, the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of said raven tapped upon Edgar Allen Poe's chamber door.

No, but why pick on that part? There is the more relevant joy of Ravens at dawn (the example of Sigrun’s joy/happiness (fegin/fain) being likened to that of Odin’s Ravens ‘when... dewy-feathered, they see the brow of day’). And does 'joyful' need be mean 'melodious' (as in a black-birds song)? Cannot a 'Joyous song' (of Ravens or Warriors) be raucous -- a raucous song Joyful?

If you can stand yet another bit of trivia, Janice, the Wikipedia article for the dawn chorus lists the blackbird as the first to start singing in the UK, sometimes starting as early as 3am. In an age before clocks, that timing might be considered in the middle section of the night, no?

There's no reference listed for that, so I'll cite the Beatles: Blackbird singing in the dead of night...

Actually, that fact was what prompted me to ask the question in the first place, in my very first post #1.

I had this vision of the blackbird waking Beowulf while it was still dark, joyously singing, "You're homeward bound, B, baby."

I have come to the conclusion that it was not a vision but simply a hallucination.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turdus_merula_2.ogg
Sounds like this. :)

Thanks, Janice!

Julie, I love that video--I'm sending it to my granddaughter, who will flip over it. One of the best, most refreshing creature vids ever! And the human is good too. The way the raven mimics the man is brill. Thanks so much!

And Janice, the Finnish Turdus blackbird song, what a delight! Thank you.

Perhaps the delightful little Welshman in Julie's video was conversing with one of the heroes of the second branch of the Mabinogi, the folk-tales of his people.

Bendigeidfran (Brân the Blessed) was named after the bird, and is reputed to be the reason why there are ravens at the Tower of London.

I love it. Thanks for clarifying the dialect. I thought it was Scots. Ann, a whole new world for me to explore.

Merlyn actually lives in Canada, but he's a Welshman, nonetheless. He's from Swansea and a lifelong "amdrammer". He longs to put on a production of Under Milk Wood, which, if he is successful, would probably also feature his brother Roy, who came out to join him in the Northwest Territories.

And, Janice, if you're exploring the Mabinogion, look out for a character called "Efnisien". He's a weird one...

The more I dig into this Beowulf legend, the more I convince myself that it is an old Norse saga that has been Christianized and sanitized. The Cain reference must surely originally have been to Loki (who fathered Fenrir and Jǫrmungandr among other disreputable children), and the good monks did not wish to taint the story with foreign gods.

If I dig deep enough I'm sure to find someone who has documented the same doubt.

The notes to the Benjamin Slade translation (linked in Post #35 above) are a treasure trove.

I am impelled to pass on the following anecdote.

I learned the word "halvdan" early in my Swedish-vocabulary-building: it means "mediocre, middling, not well-done, sloppily made". When I began my first "real job" in Sweden, a large office where I had hundreds of workmates, there was a colleague whom everyone referred to as Halvdan. When I protested one day that it wasn't a very nice nickname, they laughed and said that was his real name. So I shut up but secretly wondered why anyone would give their child such a debilitating name. Well, in the notes to the Slade translation I found this footnote.

Half-Dane is Beowulf-Scyldings's son. "Half-Danes" later appear in the poem (l. 1068) ruled over by Hnaef, apparently part of the Danish forces (or allied with them). Wrinn proposes that they may actually be Jutes in Danish service, hence their strange names.

It isn't hard to understand how the name became (in Swedish) something done only by halves, local humor like the rivalry of two towns with opposing football teams.

Looking further I found this (seeming) confirmation: "In Norwegian, the name Halvdan means - half dane. The name Halvdan originated as a Norwegian name. The name Halvdan is most often used as a boy name or male name." http://www.meaning-of-names.com/norwegian-names/halvdan.asp#ixzz3hjhgiREQ

Re ethnic designations, one must remember the many old and new borders and allegiances. Norwegian Vikings were independent tribes, later Norway was under the rule of Denmark, then Sweden and only in modern times (1905) again became an independent nation, a peaceful transition with no bloodshed.

Related to this word "halvdan" is my former puzzlement over an expression I often heard when the language was still fairly new to me and I was daily trying to make sense of what I heard around me. A new employee who was quickly elevated to a top position was described by everyone as having "arrived and quickly climbed up in the high seat (högsätet)". Later, in the course of reading the Old Norse literature I understood this everyday expression to be another relic, a reference to the elevated position of the king in the great hall, what Murphy-Sullivan translate as "throne" and Heany translates as "platform" (leading me to think of the "high table" at Oxford—though that may be folk etymology on my part).

Such is the pleasure of reading Beowulf—incidentally the latter part of the name, "ulf", means "wolf"—still a common name in Sweden today, like "Björn", bear, and "Tor", Thor, and lots of names with "Gud", indicating a divine connection to the pagan gods. Topdown conversion is not very effective.

Thanks, Ann. I shall have to live for a very long time if I am to read all the books in my list. Duly noted.

Ann, is an "amdrammer" someone involved in amateur dramatic productions? I don't know the expression and can't find it.

Now I have received the two scholarly papers from Matt. Warm thanks for that.

I have read them and am less than lukewarm. IMO, which is perhaps not worth much, the arguments of both can be compared to a half-baked pretzel. They really tried, both of them, to make a case of the blithe-hearted raven. Kinda reminded me of the other pressing question: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

But I'm glad to have the papers and glad to have read them, and Matt was very generous to help me out there. Thanks so much.

I was reminded of this today when I stumbled across (in Kenneth Rexerot's "Classics Revisited") this sentence:

Quote:

Hrothgar and Hygelac were historical persons, and Beowulf may have actually existed.

The deeper I sink into this, the more convinced I become that the "one and only copy" is a corrupted version of an earlier manuscript or oral tradition in Old Norse. A sanitized version.

Consider these lines from the on-line Old English and the Benjamin Slade translation :
Him ðá Scyld gewát tó gescæphwíle
Then Scyld departed at the destined time,

felahrór féran on fréan waére·
still in his full-strength, to fare in the protection of the Lord Frea;

The footnote to the underlined part:
[27]usually translated 'into the keeping of the Lord'. Frea is used both to designated the Christian god as well as the pre-Christian 'heathen' Saxon god Frea, Old Norse Freyr- lit. 'the first one', and often associated with the harvest and prosperity. Schneider takes wære (with a short vowel) as 'water' and translates '...into the water of Frea'.

Some thoughts on this:
felahrór féran on fréan waére is translated in the Heaney ms. as
and he crossed over into the Lord's keeping

and in the Murphy-Sullivan ms. as Scyld went to dwell with the World's Warder

which seems to me a diplomatic solution. Because I find it hard to believe that footnote claim that Frea was used to designate the Christian god. This Norse god was sometimes worshiped as a male, with the name Frej, and sometimes as a female, his sister Freja. "Frej" means "lord".

Both Frej and Freja were fertility gods and the horse-drawn sun was their symbol. Frej was represented in the temple in Uppsala with a prominent phallus (as documented by the early church representatives; no visual representations of the temple or its contents remain). But a little statute of Frej (which well might have been a copy of this temple statue was found in archaeological digs and is on display at Stockholm's Museum of History. http://www.denstoredanske.dk/Nordisk...ogi/Guder/Frej
A statuette of the sun chariot is on display in the Danish national museum https://www.google.se/search?q=denma...w=1137&bih=692
This was found as recently as 1902 when a stretch of peat bog was plowed. It is not a small model.

These lines raise two questions in my mind.

Firstly. Why was "Lord Frea" not censored out of the manuscript when the monk transcribed it. One might speculate that some other manuscript was being sanitized, and the transcriber wasn't aware of who Frej was. But then when he got into the manuscript and started finding references to the pagan religion and its gods he altered the text to fit into the traditions of the new religion, Christianity. Sort of like the Stalinist airbrushing of Trotsky et al out of the photographs. http://iliketowastemytime.com/2012/0...-regime-5-pics

Or Ramses II who at Luxor (and elsewhere) changed dates on works and statues of his predecessors to glorify himself. History is full of such hubristic hoodwinking.

Still speculating, but it seems plausible that as the transcriber got further into the ms. he replaced the heathen references with Christian ones, perhaps removing or rewriting. Which brings me back to the strange raven symbolizing joy or blitheness or glad-heartedness.

the guest slept inside
oþ þæt hrefn blaca heofones wynne until the black raven, the joy of the sky
blíðheort bodode. Ðá cóm beorht scacan 1802
declared glad-heartedly. Then came bright hurrying,
scaþan ónetton
fighters hastening;

Sól (Old Norse "Sun")[1] or Sunna (Old High German, and existing as an Old Norse and Icelandic synonym: see Wiktionary sunna, "Sun") is the Sun personified in Germanic mythology. One of the two Old High German Merseburg Incantations, written in the 9th or 10th century CE, attests that Sunna is the sister of Sinthgunt.
Freja had a falcon-skin cape that allowed her to travel as a bird.

Still speculating, of course, but it isn't too much a stretch to wonder if this passage is a revisionist text and the original bird and Sunna or Frej or Freja were consigned to literature's dustbin. Suppose this passage about the sun going up had a reference to something so obviously pagan that the censor board understood that it had to be changed.

Oh, it would be lovely if a real ms. should turn up some day. There is no end of manuscripts hidden away in the Vatican and museum collections. Even today old fragments turn up here and there and throw new light on old mysteries.

For instance the Dead Sea Scrolls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls and fragments of manuscripts used to embalm old mummies http://www.livescience.com/49489-old...ummy-mask.html

The Swedish king, Gustaf Vasa, tore down monasteries and nunneries to use the stone in his castles. He was equally frugal to recycle other items. He ordered confiscated pages of illuminated manuscripts should be reused to wrap the royal butter.

On the other hand, Sweden has a good collection of wooden statues from the churches and monasteries because there were no iconoclast mobs to destroy them. The change to Christianity (like the change from paganism to Catholicism) was a top-down activity, by royal degree. The people didn't like it, but then they certainly didn't like giving up Frej and Thor either.

It is interesting to ponder how many have "the faith of their fathers" simply because their forefathers were forcibly converted to a new religion.

Hi Janice,
This is a strange quest you are on. "Frea" is used to mean lord in Old English, not only in Beowulf. In Dream of the Rood, which is even less likely to be based on pagan materials, you find it in these lines: "Geseah ic þā frean mancynnes / efstan elne micle, þæt hē mē wolde on gestīgan." ("I saw men’s Sovereign strive to scale me...") Of course, that is not an obstacle to the word ultimately coming from Frea the God, or Frea the God being named so because he is a/the lord.

What you may be finding is the various tendrils and threads that made Christianity welcome to Scandinavians, at least not wholly foreign. Check out the Heliand, the 9th century Saxon poem that converts Jesus into a northern chieftain. In Njal's Saga, a pagan is appointed to arbitrate the religious controversy in Iceland ca. 1000, and he decides in favor of Christianity. Snorri's Saint Olaf's Saga in Heimskringla is subtle and inquiring with respect to forcible conversions.

You'll find Hrothgar and other Danes from Beowulf in both the Hrolf Kraki Saga and Saxo Grammaticus' History of the Danes, both written long after Beowulf. "Bjovulf" figures in Poul Andersen's novel based on the former, Hrolf Kraki's Saga. There is zero chance of Beowulf being based on a lost Scandinavian manuscript, but an Angle writing in the 8th or 9th century must have learned 6th century Danish and Swedish stories from somewhere.

Bill, thank you so much.

It is true that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" and this is probably not the place to babble on about my explorations.

Before I go on to thank you (and others who have kindly supplied me with various papers and thoughts) I want to say that I don't suspect that there is a lost Scandinavian manuscript, because the runic alphabet wouldn't be capable of such flowery language. But possibly (speculation) there might be earlier manuscript versions of Beowulf.

I also want to make it clear that I'm not in any way dissing the translations of Tim and Alan or Heany or the new one with the parallel or the ones I hope to read. (I learned from the Rexroth text, that Edward Morgan has done a translation as well). I share what I think is the orthodox one, that it is an oral tale conserved in England and written down there.

With the caveat "a little knowledge" and all that, I have long been interested (as an amateur) in the Christianization of Scandinavia and the influences back and forth in several directions. As I mentioned earlier (I think) I live in a part of Sweden where this history is still very much alive, although the tourism is doing its very best to muddle it beyond recognition. (I won't digress on that, but am sorely tempted.)

Apart from that Disneyish muddying of the waters, several excellent books (in Swedish history and in history of religion) written by academic researchers for the most part and none of them the hyped-up "popular history" kind of book.

I have read Dream of the Rood and forgotten it, but I have it here somewhere. The Edward Morgan translation might be available "used book" in the UK. You seem to be getting rid of your libraries and I am acquiring them.

I have the other sagas you mention (as you know) in Swedish. I'm always acquiring interesting books I find in antiquarian shops and book sales, thinking to read them in due time. So I've pulled those on this topic into a little stack, some read and several, perhaps many, unread. Among those (I located and added yesterday) is a "translation to Swedish" of a 6th century bible known here as Codex Argenteus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Argenteus . It was brought to Sweden after the Thirty-year war as war spoils. It is (or so says the blurb) the oldest of all Germanic bibles and still half-heathen). It is on display at Uppsala University. It was probably plundered for its silver encasement. I've viewed it way back when I didn't know what I was looking at.

The other one I found yesterday is a translation of Rimbert's "Life of Ansgar" and a number of essays about Rimbert and about his book.

Thank you for pinpointing Hrothgar et al. Rexroth's short text gave no reference to how he arrived at their being "historical figures". The time reckoning is, of course, important.

In closing, I'll say again that I am just piddling around. I don't expect to make any substantial contributions to literary history. It all started when that happy raven pulled me up short and then I got hooked. There are worse pastimes.

All this Bill, before I've had my morning coffee. Thanks again for your wise comments and for taking the time.

PS. About Frey being a word for Lord. In the above link about the statue of Frej, this Danish text, which I'm quickly translating.

Frey, Freyr, main god of fertility. He was one of the Vanir gods, a brother of Freja; both are children of Njord. (...) His name means "lord" or "master" and is found in many forms, such as Frey, Frø and Frøj.

I posted a piece of smart-arse pedantry and immediately wished I hadn't.
.

That's all right, Ann. I hadn't had my coffee when I wrote that post.

But it's true in any language: gwybodaeth ychydig yn beth peryglus

I hope the rest of the post wasn't as haphazard but it may well be.

Yes, the saying, in English, is indeed "a little learning". I was thinking in Swedish. :)

http://xref.w3dictionary.org/index.php?fl=sv&id=22

PS. Hygelac is referenced in Frankish (Latin) chronicles as Chlochilaichus, killed by a future Frankish king, Theudebert. The Swedish king Ongentheow is identified as Egil, famous for suppressing Tunni's slave army.

Okay, is it just me, or is anyone else thinking of Stephen Colbert right now?

Probably just me. As you were.

I wasn't, Julie. But I am now.

I was going to talk a little about Egil, but common sense and giggle signals from the outside world tell me this thought train has arrived at its final destination.

So I'll just inform interested parties that I've got my tickets and beds for a little summer excursion to new and Old Uppsala and to Stockholm and and the islands of Birka and Ädelsö (both the latter are world heritage sites).

Not much left there to see at the ancient sites except crumbling foundations and new museums, alas no heathen temple, of which not even the pole holes have ever been found. Although under the old cathedral at Old Uppsala, pole holes of some long houses and remains of an earlier wooden church were discovered during repairs. (Isn't it amazing what archaeologists can do these days)? But since we know that churches were always built on top of old heathen temples, the clues may be long vanished.

The post-glacial rebound has altered the waterways and island boundaries considerably (about five meters elevation each thousand years). But the currently melting glaciers should soon fix that!

In the former Virgin Mary chapel of the new Uppsala Cathedral (late 1200s) lies bad-tempered King Gustaf Vasa, confiscator of church property and responsible for Sweden's forced conversion to Lutherism around 500 years after the forced conversion to Catholicism. He is depicted on a sarcophagus between two of his wives. The third one is somewhere nearby since she outlived him by many years, being only 18 when she wed him. (He died thate same year, and there is surely a moral to that tale.)

If the weather holds, some nice water cruises and walk-abouts are sure to ensue among the burial mounds and on the campus of Uppsala University (est. 1477) where the Codex Argenteus is on display.

Stockholm and Uppsala are at their very best this time of year. And I always meet lovely people when I travel. So some good has come of my querulous blackbird query after all.

(Of course all this fades in comparison with what the UK has to offer in historical sites. BTW Bill is the expert here. I'm just a babbling amateur.)

The laughter was gentle. The conversation of informed enthusiasts in whatever sphere is always worth listening to. Like Odin's ravens. We listen, we learn.

Enjoy your venture into Midgard; tell us about it on your return.

Jan, luv.
"Bon voyage" :) (Swedish, English, Latin... whatever...The French sure monopolised that one!)

Jayne

Sorry, if it wasn't clear...I meant only to celebrate Bill's and Stephen's joy and excitement over sharing their arcane knowledge--certainly not to mock it!

My sixteen-year-old daughter's favorite quotation:

So Janice, if you have something you want to say about Egil, please feel safe to share it. Anyone too geekery-impaired to appreciate it has surely bailed out of the thread by now.

Honestly Ann, Julie and Jayne, I did NOT take umbrage. I had a giggle myself.

But I do think that this thread has run its course and it would be self-indulgent to continue my ramblings.

Two of the ordered books in the mail today. One is a doctor's thesis from 1991, which made me drool (luckily not directly on the book). The other I thought might not be helpful as it has no footnotes or references, but I changed my mind when this caught my eye during a quick look-through:

(I have always wondered if there weren't some connection between "ing" and "England". If we live long enough we will get answers to all our questions. ;) )

There is more of interest about Sweden in this little book, but this caught my attention because of (posts #58 and #60) that early line about Lord Frey.

felahrór féran on fréan waére·
still in his full-strength, to fare in the protection of the Lord Frea;

In this line, Frea seems to be used as a name. IF it is true (and it might not be) that Frey was not used in English as a name, but only as a title, it seems that these lines might be a hand-me-down from an older manuscript or oral text with foreign origins.

For the English readers still with us, I'll mention that this quote is from a small pamphlet "Lost Gods of England" and the author is Kathleen Herbert, about whom I know next to nothing at this point--only that she wrote a triology set in sixth century Britain, one of which won the Georgette Heyer prize for an outstanding historical novel, and that she read English at Oxford.

Looking at this map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A...xons_jutes.png , it occurred to me that oral poetry was the property of many bards and Beowulf might be handed down through Angle or Saxon oral tradition, prior to Viking rule, even though it is about the Geats and the Danes.

One must not underestimate the extensive movements of people and cultural artifacts. A runestone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6k_Runestone raised at a village quite near my home mentions Tjodrik, i. e. Theoderik the Great, who was king of the Ostrogoths (475–526), ruler of Italy (493–526), regent of the Visigoths (511–526), and a patricius of the Roman Empire. Rome is quite far from here overland, but not for a sailing ship. The Rök stone contains both kennings and magic spells.

Oh, lordy, I have more to say, but an hour ago I claimed I was not going to say any more. :o

PS I want to thank Matt who has kindly shared several relevant documents. I am in his debt.

Thanks, friends. I'm afraid I flunk the Silmarillion quiz. But I have a nephew in law who has read it 20 times!

Happy trails, Janice. Birka shows up in histories as a great trading depot, including for the trade in captured Frankish and English people carried down the Volga and on to Baghdad.

Sadly that is true, though in the Swedish histories it is ignored and they are called tradesmen and merchants. People get very upset at the mention of slave trade and human sacrifice and deny it vehemently. All countries whitewash their histories and their religions.

In fact the word "slave" comes from "Slav" because so many Slavic people were enslaved by the Vikings and carried off to the Muslim countries where, (we shall suppose) their descendants are faithful practitioners of Islam today.

They should not be romanticized, the Vikings. Mr. Putin might well have some of their less desirable genes.

What's more, (as I'm, sure you also know, Bill) Russia was founded by the fierce Rus who were none other than another strain of Vikings. Via the Norman branch not only England was conquered but also Italy conquered and united. If the colony on Newfoundland had survived who knows what world politics would have looked like today. Maybe not much different. The human race isn't a very nice success story.

(Can someone please gag that woman who just goes on and on?)

Thanks, Janice. (What lightweights, those guilty Swedes.)

I had to come in on this, Janice, as the above title caught my eye. I have had, and enjoyed, for many years a book titled 'The Lost Gods of England' by Brian Branston, It is 200+ pages and was published in 1957. I can't help wondering if there is any connection between the two (I see Herbert's pamphlet was published in 2011).

Thank you, Angela, for commenting. I found a copy of this book close to home at a decent price and have ordered it. If you liked it, I'm sure I will too.

I don't know if there is a connection between the two books. The Herbert book is titled "Looking for the Lost Gods of England" and the Branston book is titled simply "The Lost Gods of England". I'll let you know how they compare when the Branston book arrives. Should be sometime this week.

I will be interested to know how they compare. Branston is a scholar and there are academic papers of his that I've seen online but his writing style is easy to read. I found 'The Lost Gods of England' very interesting as he makes a case for a split between the norse and english gods, and their mythology going in different directions, informed by environment.

I would be interested to know more about this too. Easter is famously named for a pagan goddess of whom we know practically nothing.

I have two items I'd like to document in this thread, items I stumbled over in the course of my haphazard reading.

The first is from a little dictionary I took with me on my recent Viking sighting expedition: "Vikingatidens ABC", which might be rendered in English to somthing like "ABC of the Viking Age". (The observant will note the "tidens" in the title which is (tid) the same root that appears in the -tide of Yuletide and Eastertide--I digress.)

With reference to my musings and Tim's (post 18)

this entry is interesting:

Allfader, ett av Odens epitet. Förekommer i isländsk skaldediktning och bl a i eddadikten "Grimnismål". I "Snorres Edda" är A. den främste och äldste av gudarna.

This entry is authored by CO Carin Orrling, antiquary at the Swedish History Museum.

Quick translation:

All-father, one of the epithets applied to Odin. It occurs in court poetry and (among other places) in the Eddaic poem "Grimnismål". In "Snorres Edda" Allfather is the foremost and eldest of the gods.

Note: The translation of "skadediktning" to "court poetry" follows "A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture", edited by Rory McTurk.

The second item I'd like to document is from "Women in Medieval English Society" by Mavis E. Mate.

Quote:

(...) During the second half of the twelfth century literate women turned from Latin to French and command of the Latin language and grammar disappeared, even from the nunneries (Orme, 1984: 158-60). The court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, as she moved from Poitiers to England and back, played a dominant role in the promotion and diffusion of the ideals of troubador lyric poetry and became the catalysing factor in the integration of Celtic myths into continental literature (Lazar 1976). By the end of the fourteenth century, however, French was ceasing to be the spoken and literary language of gentility and writers such as Chaucer and Langland had shown the power and flexibility of the native tongue. (...)

This seems pertinent because one can extrapolate that in a similar way, in an earlier age, the oral Beowulf was transported from court to court by entertaining bards and when it finally came to be written down the religion of the original stories had been changed--in keeping with the times.

Again I want to stress that I am not declaring a scholarly breakthrough :), but simply re-stating my suspicions that Beowulf, though transcribed in English, is an old oral poem that retains relicts of its Scandinavian and pagan origins: Allfather Odin morphed to the Christian Allfather, Loki morphed to Cain, and that damnably joyful raven is a typo. :rolleyes:

I haven't yet delved "The Lost Gods" so I may be back. :eek:

I finally worked my way down the stack to "The Lost Gods of England" and it is exactly the reference I needed. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject and send my eternal gratitude to Angela France.

Among other helpful items it mentions that the Allfather attribution is not to Odin but to the god Tiwaz who preceded him and usurped him (Tuesday and Wednesday, Tiwaz and Odinn/Odin/Woden but that's an off-track note).

Tiwaz (under his many Indo-European names) was the original Sky-God who fertilized the Earth Mother. Our Indo-European heritage is always with us.

On the original topic of this thread I can say I got grist for my mill re the theory that Beowulf (the version we know) was a Christianized poem that had its roots in the pagan Sweden--this was perhaps not done by monk scribes as I suspected, but by time and devout converts.

It is a mesmerizing book; especially those who are familiar with the mythologies of religion in the various cultures will have many aha moments. The "Lost Gods" is making me spend time on a lot of other references and leads such as the legend of Wayland the Smith and this casket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_Casket . (Some of my favorite books are museum catalogs.)

Anyway, I'm having a great time. Including being made more steadfast in my belief that religion fulfills a primitive need and it's all superstitious bunkum.

How sad for those lads who martyred themselves in Syria, how sad for the Christians et up by the lions, how sad for all the evangelists backing Israel because they hope for the Apocalypse, how sad for all of mankind who has endured death and destruction down the ages from altar sacrifices (there is a link between Iphigenia and the Aztec prisoners) to placate the gods and warred throughout the ages.

If you consider the religious horrors served up in our lifetime--the exterminations of the Jews in WW II, the atrocities of the Bosnian war two decades ago, the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, etc. etc. so who is surprised that ISIS attracts young westerners to join the beheading of the infidels.

There are many translation of Cesar Vallejo's poem below, but the one I like best is (of course) the one I first read which was by Michael Hamburger.

Los dados eternos / The Eternal Dice

God of mine, I am weeping for the life that I live;
I am sorry to have stolen your bread;
but this wretched, thinking piece of clay
is not a crust formed in your side:
you have no Marys that abandon you!

My God, if you had been man,
today you would know how to be God,
but you always lived so well,
that now you feel nothing of your own creation.
And the man who suffers you: he is God!

Today, when there are candles in my witchlike eyes,
as in the eyes of a condemned man,
God of mine, you will light all your lamps,
and we will play with the old dice …
Gambler, when the whole universe, perhaps,
is thrown down,
the circled eyes of Death will turn up,
like two final aces of clay.

My God, in this muffled, dark night,
you can’t play anymore, because the Earth
is already a die nicked and rounded
from rolling by chance;
and it can stop only in a hollow place,
in the hollow of the enormous grave.

This was a long thread, but hopefully it is completed now. Even though I didn't find compelling proof that the "joyful raven" is a corruption. Thanks all who took part.

Adding in: the original magnificent poem.

Dios mío, estoy llorando el ser que vivo;
me pesa haber tomádote tu pan;
pero este pobre barro pensativo
no es costra fermentada en tu costado:
¡tú no tienes Marías que se van!

Dios mío, si tú hubieras sido hombre,
hoy supieras ser Dios;
pero tú, que estuviste siempre bien,
no sientes nada de tu creación.
¡Y el hombre sí te sufre: el Dios es él!

Hoy que en mis ojos brujos hay candelas,
como en un condenado,
Dios mío, prenderás todas tus velas,
y jugaremos con el viejo dado.
Tal vez ¡oh jugador! al dar la suerte
del universo todo,
surgirán las ojeras de la Muerte,
como dos ases fúnebres de lodo.

Dios míos, y esta noche sorda, obscura,
ya no podrás jugar, porque la Tierra
es un dado roído y ya redondo
a fuerza de rodar a la aventura,
que no puede parar sino en un hueco,
en el hueco de inmensa sepultura.
- Cesar Vallejo

It's the Branston book you're recommending, I take it? Thanks for scouting this trail!