The Emendation Eorle (Heruli) in Beowulf, Line 6a: Setting the Poem in “The Named Lands of the North” MICHAEL D. C. DROUT Wheaton College NELSON GOERING Signum University To most editors, line 6a of Beowulf, “egsode eorl,” has required explana- tion if not emendation. A straightforward and literal translation, “terri- fied the warrior,” makes little sense in the context of the celebration of Scyld Scefing’s great deeds in the opening lines of the poem. 1 Most edi- tors and translators therefore follow J. M. Kemble and Eduard Sievers in emending eorl to accusative plural eorlas and printing square brackets in their editions. 2 The opening lines would then be translated as: The authors would like to thank Tom Shippey, John Hill, Haruko Moma, Scott Kleinman, James Harland, and Namiko Hitotsubashi for their feedback and encouragement. © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0026-8232/2020/11703-0001$10.00 1. Grammatically singular eorl might be taken as a collective plural in the sense of “ter- rified warriors,” but “such a use of egsode with a singular object in variation with ofteah with plural objects (þreatum, mægþum) raises particular doubts” (R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles, eds., Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4th ed. [University of Toronto Press, 2008], 112). The verse is also metrically suspect, since the two unstressed syllables -ode would normally count as as single metrical position when not verse-final according to the “rule of the coda” (now sometimes called “Fulk’s rule”). See Thomas M. Cable, The English Alliterative Tradition (Phil- adelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 19; and R. D. Fulk, A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 221, 228. A class II weak verb like egsode is normally followed by a trochaic word to form a type A (or A2b) verse, as in fundode wrecca (the adventurer yearned) (1137b) or tryddode tīrfæst (the glorious one stepped forth) (922a). There are some fourteen examples of such verses in Beowulf (see Fulk, History of Old English Meter, 205 n. 70, for the full list) but only two sound parallels for taking 6a as a type E verse without an extra final syllable: drihtlice wīf (noble woman) (1158a) and lāðlicu lāc (awful prizes) (1584a). The metrical argument for emending line 6a by adding an additional final syllable is not decisive on its own, but it does carry a not inconsiderable probabilistic weight. 2. Kemble was the first editor to print “eorl[as].” With the exceptions of Schaubert, who adopted “eorl,” and C. L. Wrenn (discussed below), subsequent editors have followed Kemble. See John Mitchell Kemble, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Poems of Beowulf, the Traveller’s Song, 285 This content downloaded from 212.224.224.146 on January 24, 2020 00:33:14 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).