TWO NOTES ON "BEOWULF" (WITH GLANCES AT "VAFþRUĐNISMÁL", BLICKLING HOMILY 16, AND "ANDREAS", LINES 839-846)

Abstract

'Beowulf', lines 1415a, 'ofer harne stan'; 1423b, 'horn stundum song'; and 88b, 2553b, and 2744b, 'under harne stan'Neither Klaeber nor Wrenn commented on the 'harne stan' of Beowulf', line 1415 a. Like other editors they both glossed 'bar' as 'grey, old'. Probably most readers have assumed that the poet mentions this hoary or ancient stone to add to the 'eldrich' atmosphere of the haunted mere, but it takes on another meaning when we compare the following passage from the apparently related passage in the Buckling Homily on St Michael:(... St Paul was looking northwards over this earth to where all the waters run down underneath. And there beyond the water he saw a certain har stan; and north of the stone woods had grown up, very rimy, and there was deep gloom there; and under the stone was a dwelling place of water goblins and outlaws. And he saw that on the cliff in the icy woods many black souls hung bound by their hands; and their (attendant) devils, in the shape of water goblins, were clawing at them like greedy wolves; and the water down below the cliff was black. And between the cliff and the water were some twelve miles. And when the branches broke, the souls fell down that hung by the branches, and the goblins seized them. Those, then, were the souls that were brought to ruin by sin here in this world and would not give it over before their life's end.)7(Then the one hardy in fight awoke and surveyed the plain before the city gates. Steep crags, cliffs, towered, structures adorned with tiles stood round a bar statt, windswept walls; then the wise man knew that in (his) journey he had reached the land of Marmcdonia.)Here editors and translators have mostly taken 'harne stan' to mean the 'beorgas' and translated the phrase as 'grey rock' or some equivalent. But the city must stand either on the crags or in a hollow between them; so if the poet had meant what the commentators think he does, one would have expected either ofer or under, not 'ymbe'. The Andreas-poct seems to have envisioned his 'harnc stan' as a monumental stone pylon marking the entrance to the city, with the buildings and walls flanking it. Like the 'hare stanas' in Beowulf, line 1415 a and the homily, his 'harne stan' marks a boundary between one domain or jurisdiction and another. This usage may represent an extension of a sense originally applied to single trilithons standing alone in the countryside.The passage in Andreas in turn helps to elucidate the other 'hare stanas' mentioned in Beowulf, lines 88yb, 2553b, and 2744.13. These are plainly not upright stones standing alone in open country. In each of the three passages a warrior either passes or is ordered to pass 'under harne stan': Sigemund and Beowulf go to challenge the dragons they slay, and dying Beowulf tells Wiglaf to go and view the treasure that he has won. The poet seems to envision both dragons as living in barrows and keeping their hoards there; so in each of these passages the 'harne stan' appears to be the stone trilithon that forms the barrow's entrance. 'Under' in this formula probably means 'through' or 'within' rather than 'under'; compare '(inn) under eorðweall', meaning 'within the earthmound', in Beowulf, lines 2957a and 3090a, and 'in under eodoras', meaning something like 'into or within the precincts', in line 1037 and Genesis, lines 2447 and 2489, and 'undar ederos' used in the same sense in Heliand, line 4943. …