MEDIUM ÆVUM, VOL. LXXXIX, No. , pp. – © SSMLL,
GRENDEL’S BLOOD: ON THE TRANSLATION
OF BEOWULF LINE
Readers of Beowulf have long struggled to come to terms with the peculiar
combination of corporeal and spiritual qualities attributed to Grendel.
1
On the
one hand, he is described as a humanoid giant (‘eoten’, line a), a man (‘guma’,
line a), and a warrior (‘rinc’, line b), who stems from a monstrous mother,
descends ultimately from a human progenitor (i.e. Cain), and possesses limbs that
can be sundered from his body.
2
On the other hand, Grendel is characterized as a
spectral menace, a death-shadow (‘dēaþscua’, line a), with knowledge of magic
and the underworld (‘helrūne’, line a; cf. lines –), who is described as
both God’s adversary (‘Godes andsaca’, line b) and a demon from hell (‘helle
gāst’, line a; cf. ‘fēond on helle’, line b). Confronting the bewildering
array of qualities attributed to Grendel, scholars appear to have given relatively
little thought to the blood that flows from the monster’s wounded body. After
losing his arm in combat with Beowulf, the mortally wounded Grendel flees
to his mere to die in the company of devils. Blood fills his watery abode as life
departs from his body:
Ðæ ¯r wæs on blōde brim weallende;
atol y ¯ða geswing eal gemenged
hāton heolfre heorodrēore wēol.
Dēaðfæ ¯ge dēog siððan drēama lēas
in fenfreoðo feorh ālegde,
hæ ¯þene sāwle; þæ ¯r him hel onfēng. (lines –)
(ere the water boiled with blood; the dreary roll of waves all suffused with hot
gore heaved with battle-butchery. Doomed to death, he disappeared after he laid
aside his life, his heathen soul void of contentment in his fen-sanctuary; there
hell received him.)
3
Grendel’s blood is described in this passage with the term heorudrēor, a compound
word that is attested only in Beowulf. In the translation of R. D. Fulk, provided
above, the term is rendered rather colourfully as ‘battle-butchery’. Yet several
influential translators give ‘sword-blood’ as the meaning of the term in this
passage. e translation of John R. Clark Hall, long valued for its fidelity, reads:
‘en the water was boiling with blood, the frightful surge of the waves welled
up, all mingled with hot gore, – with sword-blood’.
4
Another prose translation
admired for its accuracy, that of E. Talbot Donaldson, similarly reads: ‘ere
the water was boiling with blood, the horrid surge of waves swirling, all mixed