Wolves in "Beowulf" and Other Old English Texts 1843846403, 9781843846406

Table of contents :
Front cover
Contents
Acknowledgements
Note on the Text
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Wolf in This Story
1: A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws
2: The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf
3: A Wolfish Way of Reading 'Wulf and Eadwacer'
4: Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story
5: The Speech-stealing 'weargas' and 'wulfas' of 'Beowulf'
Conclusion: The Stories Wolves Tell
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts

Nature and Environment in the Middle Ages ISSN: 2399-3804 (Print) ISSN: 2399-3812 (Online) Series Editor Michael D.J. Bintley Editorial Board Jennifer Neville Aleks Pluskowski Gillian Rudd Questions of nature, the environment and sustainability are increasingly important areas of scholarly enquiry in various fields. This exciting new series aims to provide a forum for new work throughout the medieval period broadly defined (c.400–1500), covering literature, history, archaeology and other allied disciplines in the humanities. Topics may range from studies of landscape to interaction with humans, from representations of “nature” in art to ecology, ecotheory, ecofeminism and ecocriticism; monographs and collections of essays are equally welcome. Proposals or enquiries may be sent directly to the series editor or to the publisher at the addresses given below. Dr Michael D.J. Bintley, Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP12 3DF Previously published: 1: The Natural World in the Exeter Book Riddles, Corinne Dale 2: Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations, Michael J. Warren 3: Restoring Creation: The Natural World in the Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives of Cuthbert and Guthlac, Britton Elliott Brooks 4: The Enclosed Garden and the Medieval Religious Imaginary, Liz Herbert McAvoy 5: Animal Soundscapes in Anglo-Norman Texts, Liam Lewis

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts

Elizabeth Marshall

D. S. BREWER

© Elizabeth Marshall 2022 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Elizabeth Marshall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2022 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN 978 1 84384 640 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 80010 613 0 (ePDF) D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate Cover image: Detail of the speech-stealing wolf, from Richard de Fournival, Bestiaire d'amour (1278–1325), BnF français 1951, fol. 3v. Reproduced by kind permission.

For the first wolves in my story

CONTENTS Acknowledgements

ix

Note on the Text

xi

Abbreviations Introduction: The Wolf in This Story

xiii 1

1. A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws

19

2. The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf

55

3. A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer

89

4. Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story

121

5. The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf

157

Conclusion: The Stories Wolves Tell

207

Bibliography

215

Index

247

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

M

y life has been centred around wolves for so long that it is difficult to remember a time when it was not. I must credit the turning point to Chris Jones, whose invaluable advice initially set me on this path. I must also thank Chris for the time he devoted to helping with this project, the support and expertise he provided, and his endless reading and rereading of drafts. This book would not be what it is without his guidance. The same must also be said of Rhiannon Purdie and James Paz, as well as the anonymous readers sourced by Boydell, all of whom have provided invaluable feedback and suggestions for improvement. My utmost gratitude goes to each of them for taking the time to comb through the manuscript so meticulously. Thanks also to everyone at Boydell, all of whom have been incredibly helpful throughout this process, and especially Caroline Palmer, not least for her prefacing of each email with ‘good news’ or ‘no anxiety needed’. Opening emails about the fate of one’s book is much more enjoyable in the knowledge that there are no monsters lurking inside. I must also thank my parents, who instilled in me a love of the natural world. I might have professed boredom during your birdwatching, or proclaimed that I didn’t care about trees or flowers when you took the time to identify and observe them during my younger years, but I am sure that I wouldn’t have grown to care for the environment so much had you not consistently brought the natural world to my attention throughout my childhood. Thanks also to Rory, whose friendship gave me hope during the most difficult times. Without your support, this book wouldn't have made it past the first draft. Finally, my biggest thanks go to Angus, without whose persistent faith in my ability to complete this project I might never have done so. Thank you for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

NOTE ON THE TEXT

M

ost of the primary texts in languages other than Old English which are cited below are quoted in both the original language and in Modern English translation, the exception being quotations from works in Ancient Greek which are given in translation only. The Latin text of the Vulgate Bible is used only when necessary for linguistic examination, with quotations taken from Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. by Robert Weber et al., 5th edn, ed. by Roger Gryson (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007). Otherwise, only the Douay-Rheims translation, from The Holy Bible Translated from the Latin Vulgate, Diligently Compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and Other Editions in Divers Languages (Baltimore, MD: Murphy, 1914), is referred to. Where diacritical marks feature in the editions of the primary texts used, they have been omitted in quotations. Poems are cited by line number, prose texts by page number, and glossaries by page and line number for ease of reference (where the latter are present).1 Helmut Gneuss and Michael Lapidge’s Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2014) has been cited by entry number rather than page number for the same reason. Unless indicated otherwise, all quotations of Old English poetry are from The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. by George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, 6 vols (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1931–53), excepting those from Beowulf, for which Klaeber’s ‘Beowulf’ and ‘The Fight at Finnsburg’, ed. by R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, 4th edn (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2008) has been used. All references to the original Latin of Abbo of Fleury’s Passio Sancti Eadmundi, unless otherwise stated, are from ‘Life of St. Edmund’, in Three Lives of English Saints, ed. by Michael Winterbottom (Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972), pp. 65–92, while all translations, unless stated, are from ‘The Passion of Saint Eadmund’, in Corolla sancti Eadmundi: The Garland of Saint Edmund, King and Martyr, ed. and trans. by 1



Exceptions are the poems of the Poetic Edda, which are cited by stanza number, and some of the editions of the primary texts cited which are not paginated, such as W. M. Lindsay’s edition of Isidore’s Etymologiae. In such cases, the references given are instead to the textual apparatuses provided in each edition.

Note on the Text Francis Hervey (London: Murray, 1907), pp. 6–59. Quotations of Ælfric’s adaption are from ‘St Edmund, King and Martyr’, in Ælfric: Lives of Three English Saints, ed. by G. I. Needham (London: Methuen, 1966), pp. 43–59. Both passiones are referred to by page numbers in parentheses in the text. All translations from Old English are my own. So that the text is less repetitive, the adjective ‘wolfen’ – ‘pertaining to a wolf, wolfish’ – has been revived (the only recorded usage in the OED is from an article written in 1810),2 and is used in conjunction with ‘wolfish’, ‘wolf-like’, and ‘lupine’.



2

OED s.v. wolfen, adj. [accessed 2 June 2019].

xii

ABBREVIATIONS ASE

Anglo-Saxon England (journal)

BT

An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Based on the Manuscript Collections of Joseph Bosworth, ed. by T. Northcote Toller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898)

DMLBS

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, ed. by Richard Ashdowne, David Howlett and Ronald Latham (Oxford: British Academy, 2018)

DOE

Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online, ed. by Angus Cameron et al. (Toronto, ON: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018)

EETS

Early English Text Society

OS

Original Series

SS

Supplementary Series

ES

English Studies

JEGP

Journal of English and Germanic Philology

MGH

Monumenta Germaniae Historica

NM

Neuphilologische Mitteilungen

OED

Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

OLD

Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. by P. G. W. Glare, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)

PL

Patrologia Latina

PMLA

Publications of the Modern Language Association of America

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story

W

hile visiting New York’s Pierpont Morgan Library one autumn afternoon, Barry Holstun Lopez ponderously ran his hands over the withered pages of four manuscripts containing a bestiary, a life of St Edmund, Dante’s Divina commedia, and Pliny’s Naturalis historia. Though these texts were united by neither provenance, theme, nor genre, all nevertheless possessed two commonalities of particular interest to Lopez. The first: each featured the wolf, the object of Lopez’s research for his now-seminal book Of Wolves and Men. The second: these manuscripts were all ‘being either written or eagerly read’ during the Middle Ages, ‘a time’, Lopez considered, ‘when the wolf was distinctly present in folklore, in Church matters, and in the literature of the educated classes’.1 Yet despite feeling ‘a stunning, almost electric sense of immediate communication with another age’, Lopez opined: ‘you cannot examine any of these books without sensing that you have hardly touched in them the body of human ideas concerning the wolf’.2 Rather, the wolf ‘seems to move just beneath the pages of these volumes, loping along with that bicycling gait, through all of human history’.3 Sometimes, it passes through the pages with scarcely a whisper, the subject of a figure of speech so well-known that the wolf disappears as suddenly as it entered, with a swish of the tail that scarcely disturbs the air. On other occasions, it lingers to withstand more detailed scrutiny as it stalks its next victim through dusky woodland, or tears chunks of flesh from slick, bloody corpses to the chorus of an unkindness of ravens. Each text in which this animal appears contributes to the compendium of ‘men’s wolf thoughts’ throughout history, a ‘long haunting story of the human psyche wrestling with the wolf’.4 As long as their howls have travelled over the land, this distinctive sound has sent chills down the spines of those who heard it, an audience who has been ‘alternately attracted to […] and repelled by’ its performers.5 From the hunter-gatherers whose Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978), pp. 204–5. 2 Ibid., pp. 205–6. 3 Ibid., p. 206. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 1



Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts symbiotic affiliation with wolves may have led to the animal’s domestication, to the agrarian societies in which this co-operative relationship soured and turned to enmity, a multiplicity of meanings have been attached to the wolf by peoples from every place and time in which the two species have coexisted. Although cultural shifts have ensured that the stories told about wolves remain in continual flux, the sheer range of sentiments attached to this animal has remained constant. Today, wolves are admired as ‘sacred creature[s] of the benign wilderness’ and ‘noble hunters’, yet they are also feared and hated as ‘abhorrent monster[s] of dark forces’, ‘common criminals’, and ‘abject cowards’.6 For some, such as proponents of rewilding, they are a symbol of a wilderness untainted by humanity, ‘saints’ or ‘saviours’ of the natural world whose role in maintaining healthy ecosystems is nothing short of miraculous.7 For others, such as hunters and farmers, they are decimators of wild ungulates and livestock, bloodthirsty beasts worthy only of extermination. As Lopez notes, this ‘long haunting story of the human psyche wrestling with the wolf, alternately attracted to it and repelled by it’, is ‘a story preserved with an almost eerie aura in a collection of medieval volumes’ such as those he examined in the Pierpont Morgan Library.8 In early medieval England,9 as today, wolves were regarded with both admiration and mistrust among different groups;10 this animal ‘was widely acknowledged as a basic symbol of violence and physical force, and whilst

6



7



8 9



10

Garry Marvin, ‘Wolves in Sheep’s (and Others’) Clothing’, in Beastly Natures: Animals, Humans, and the Study of History, ed. by Dorothee Brantz (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), pp. 59–78 (p. 66). See L. David Mech, ‘Is Science in Danger of Sanctifying the Wolf?’, Biological Conservation, 150 (2012), 143–9. Lopez, p. 206. The phrase ‘early medieval England’ is used here since the problematic term ‘Anglo-Saxon’ has been avoided throughout this book. For more on this term and an insightful discussion suggesting that its usage should be re-evaluated, see David Wilton, ‘What Do We Mean by Anglo-Saxon? Pre-Conquest to the Present’, JEGP, 119 (2020), 425–54. The focus of this book is England alone since, although geopolitical boundaries are meaningless to wolves, who roamed throughout England, Wales, and Scotland until they became locally extinct in the eighteenth century, the vast majority of lupine literary material written in medieval Britain emanates from the former. Although Scotland served as a refuge for the last surviving wolves in Britain, both the archaeological and literary lupine records from early medieval Scotland are sparse to the point of virtual non-existence. On the other hand, while the wolf features as one of the Beasts of Battle, as a metaphor for the warrior, and as a creature tamed by saints in Brittonic and Old Welsh literature, there remain simply far fewer depictions of this animal in the surviving corpus than in the English tradition.

2

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story to some elites this may have been a favourable and appropriate emblem, amongst other groups, notably clerics, it was used to illustrate what they categorised as negative’.11 As such, the wolf ‘could simultaneously be an inspiring emblem and an embodiment of evil’,12 a contradiction which was the product of broader ‘medieval ways of thinking’, as ‘fragments from Classical science, pagan belief, popular tradition, and Christian teaching informed complex and even self-contradictory apprehensions’.13 Such contradictory associations were – and still are – constructed in part from differing interpretations of the wolf’s natural behaviour. Yet, unlike today, such behaviour could be observed first-hand in early medieval England; analysis of the two hundred and thirty places in England given lupine names from ad 450 onwards has demonstrated that wolves were present in a wide variety of habitats in early medieval Britain, including fields, hills, valleys, high ground, clearings, and woodland.14 Even accounting for the fact that these places could be named for human occupants (although the topography of the place bearing such a name does lend clues, since many names are found in ‘just the sort of wild places where the animals, but less probably specific people, might live’, such as ‘dales, hills and clearings in woods’),15 the considerable number of lupine toponyms ‘confirm[s] both the widespread nature and, if numbers are to be believed, abundance of Wolves in former times’.16 These numerous lupine place-names may also attest to the fact that, in comparison with other species, those who bestowed such names upon these areas were particularly attuned to the presence of their lupine neighbours. No other wild animal so frequently lent its moniker to place-names in early medieval England; only the fox comes close with 206, followed by the red deer with 185, and the badger with 141. Wolves even out-compete most domestic animals, whose names were used to designate places far more frequently than their wild counterparts; only cattle-related place-names outnumber lupine ones at 257, while the number of wolf toponyms far outstrips those named for sheep (123) and pigs (122).17 These data suggest that the impact

Aleksander Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), p. 152. 12 Ibid. 13 Susan Crane, Animal Encounters: Contacts and Concepts in Medieval Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), p. 8. 14 C. Aybes and D. W. Yalden, ‘Place-name Evidence for the Former Distribution and Status of Wolves and Beavers in Britain’, Mammal Review, 25 (1995), 201–27 (p. 204). 15 Derek Yalden, The History of British Mammals (London: T & A D Poyser, 1999), p. 132. 16 Aybes and Yalden, p. 204. 17 Yalden, p. 136.

11

3

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts of wolves upon those who lived alongside them was acute, perhaps more so than any other animal, either wild or domesticated. This suggestion is substantiated by the fact that the ‘most numerous single category of names, 18%, refers to wolf-pits’, foliage-covered holes in which wolves were caught ‘for pest control’.18 That this was the intended use of such traps is evidenced by the paucity of wolf remains in archaeological contexts (which, if present, would suggest exploitation of this species by humans), and is ‘consistent with an interpretation of […] limited value in relation to other fur-bearers’, and only sporadic hunting.19 Indeed, the high proportion of wolf-pit toponyms in contrast with the dearth of lupine archaeological remains at occupied sites suggests that wolves caught in these traps, which were usually located in fields distanced from settled areas to judge from the place-name evidence,20 were not taken into settlements to be processed but were simply discarded elsewhere. This may be congruent with the fact that Christian doctrine forbade the consumption of wolf meat, although other lupine ‘taboo items seem to have become converted into, or maintained as, occasional medicinal and magical ingredients’, perhaps as a continuation of more frequent exploitation of animal parts prior to conversion.21 For example, ‘at least a handful of wolf (or dog) teeth have been found as grave goods in 6th and 7th century Anglo-Saxon graves’,22 while the Old English translation of Sextus Placitus’s Medicina de quadrupedibus prescribes wolf flesh and blood for the treatment of some ailments.23 Nonetheless, it seems likely that wolves were considered to have relatively few exploitative usages, but upon whom effort was expended regardless. This may also be inferred from the north-western skew in lupine place-names, suggesting that ‘wolf packs residing in southern England had been destroyed, driven away, or had moved away by the time of the Norman Conquest’, perhaps indicating rigorous persecution – if not organised hunting – in this area.24 It is likely that the reason was wolf-human conflict, almost certainly as a result of wolf depredation upon livestock, especially sheep. As Aleksander Pluskowski notes, ‘the economic contribution of the pastoral sector to diet, local trade and long-distance commerce

18 19

22 23 24 20 21

Ibid., p. 132. Aleksander Pluskowski, ‘Where are the Wolves? Investigating the Scarcity of European Grey Wolf (Canis lupus lupus) Remains in Medieval Archaeological Contexts and Its Implications’, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 16 (2006), 279–95 (p. 291). Aybes and Yalden, p. 205. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 115. Pluskowski, ‘Where are the Wolves?’, p. 288. Pluskowski, Wolves, pp. 115–16. Pluskowski, ‘Where are the Wolves?’, p. 289.

4

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story was significant and widespread’ by the end of the early medieval period, at which time ‘commercial sheep farming was certainly established’ and over one million sheep could be found in England.25 Not only were sheep a valuable economic commodity, but ownership and consumption of them ‘could demonstrate wealth and status’, as it ‘showed that one controlled both the land on which they had been reared and the labour necessary to care for them and turn them into food’.26 As a result, even though plant-based foods constituted the largest part of most people’s diets in early medieval England, ‘access to livestock made people feel well fed and comfortable, both physically and socially’, and to own them constituted ‘a promise of future security and enjoyment’.27 Depredation-related conflict between wolves and humans was especially likely in the north-west of England, an area of concentrated sheep farming due to the geographic suitability of the land, but which also – to judge from toponymic evidence – saw the widespread presence of wolves. ‘The potential threat from wolves was recognised and shepherding [was therefore] widely practised’,28 as suggested by the 7 per cent of wolf placenames identified by C. Aybes and D. W. Yalden which are paired with words for enclosures or pastures such as hæg ‘fenced enclosure’, edisc ‘enclosed meadow’, and worþ ‘enclosed place’, which may refer to areas designated for protecting livestock from wolves.29 Reference is also made in the literature to the need for shepherding to prevent loss of livestock to wolves. A shepherd in Ælfric’s Colloquy, for example, says that ic drife sceap mine to heora læse, ⁊ stande ofer hig on hæte ⁊ on cyle mid hundum, þe læs wulfas forswelgen hig30 ‘I drive my sheep to their pasture and stand over them with dogs in the heat and in the cold, lest wolves swallow them up’. Though the scarcity of wolf remains in archaeological contexts renders such cultural evidence a far richer source of information about wolves in the landscapes – both real and imagined – of early medieval England, the ‘ecology of […] Anglo-Saxon England’ nonetheless ‘represents an important backdrop for situating the use of animals in the symbolic repertoire’,31 as experience and knowledge of real-world wolves necessarily Wolves, pp. 79–80. Debby Banham and Rosamond Faith, Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 76. 27 Ibid. 28 Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 80. 29 Aybes and Yalden, p. 205. 30 Ælfric’s ‘Colloquy’, ed. by G. N. Garmonsway, rev. edn (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1978), p. 22. 31 Aleksander Pluskowski, ‘Animal Magic’, in Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited, ed. by Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark, and Sarah Semple (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), pp. 103–27 (p. 105).

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5

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts inform literary and cultural representations of the animals. For example, the wolf’s role as one of the three Beasts of Battle is likely based upon realworld ethological observation. Found in eight instances across six poems out of the fourteen extant examples of the topos,32 the lupine Beast of Battle haunts battlegrounds along with the eagle and raven, seeking an easy meal from the corpses of fallen warriors. Wolves are facultative (opportunistic) scavengers,33 and in the twentieth century were known to consume human remains they chanced upon, particularly during wartime.34 ‘Anecdotal evidence’ also ‘suggests that wolves today are able to differentiate armed men from unarmed men’, thus raising the possibility that wolves in medieval England ‘learned to associate groups of armed men with food’,35 since ‘the gathering of such groups in the early medieval period may have been sufficiently frequent and distinguishable from other forms of assembly to trigger behavioural adaptations among groups of wild animals seeking a convenient source of protein in the form of fresh corpses’.36 It is possible, then, that wolves trailed armies on the move, just as in many instances of the topos the animals follow groups of warriors prior to battle.37 Furthermore, the association between ravens and wolves found in five instances

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These are: Beowulf (lines 3024–7), Elene (lines 27–8 and 112–13), Exodus (lines 164–9), Judith (lines 204–9 and 291–6), The Battle of Brunanburh (lines 60–5), and The Fight at Finnesburg (lines 5–7). This latter is ambiguous, however, as the phrase gylleð græghama ‘howling grey-coats’ (line 6) could refer to wolves, warriors, or both; see M. S. Griffith, ‘Convention and Originality in the Old English “Beasts of Battle” Typescene’, ASE, 22 (1993), 179–99 (pp. 190–1). The Beast of Battle topos, without mention of the wolf, also appears in The Battle of Maldon (lines 106–7), Genesis A (lines 1983–5, 2087–9, and 2159–61), The Fight at Finnesburg (lines 34–5), and Elene (lines 52–3), though in Maldon and Genesis A (see p. 27 below), wolf-like warriors are ‘substituted for the third of the usual triad’; Griffith, ‘Convention’, p. 191. Wolves are also depicted as plunderers of corpses in The Fortunes of Men (lines 12–14), The Wanderer (lines 82–4), and Maxims I (lines 146–51). See N. Selva et al., ‘Factors Affecting Carcass Use by a Guild of Scavengers in European Temperate Woodland’, Canadian Journal of Zoology, 83 (2005), 1590–601. See J. D. C. Linnell et al., ‘The Fear of Wolves: A Review of Wolf Attacks on Humans’, Norsk institutt for naturforskning Oppdragsmelding, 731 (2002), p. 9. Mohamed Eric Rahman Lacey, ‘Birds and Bird-lore in the Literature of Anglo-Saxon England’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University College London, 2013), pp. 116–18. Thomas J. T. Williams, ‘“For the Sake of Bravado in the Wilderness”: Confronting the Bestial in Anglo-Saxon Warfare’, in Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia, ed. by Michael D. J. Bintley and Thomas J. T. Williams, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 29 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), pp. 176– 204 (pp. 179–80). Lacey, p. 119.

6

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story of the topos38 depicts a symbiotic relationship still observable today,39 whereby ravens ‘actively seek wolves’ company to find and gain access to large carcasses’.40 That this behaviour has been observed even in ravens with no prior experience of wolves suggests that both ‘innate and learned behavioural responses towards wolves are involved’, and therefore that ‘the raven–wolf relationship is an ancient evolved one’.41 Similarly, the depiction of wolves in both the Old and New Testaments was likely based upon real-world experiences of these animals, since ‘pastoral life was both common and necessary in ancient Palestine, Greece, Italy, etc.’, and many people were therefore ‘witnesses or potential witnesses to the damage real wolves inflicted upon real flocks’, and well-aware of the danger posed by these animals to shepherds, hunters, farmers, and their dogs.42 This reality thus provided the impetus for the comparisons of ravenous people to wolves found in the Old Testament;43 for the metaphor of the good Christian as a sheep among wolves, found in five passages from the New Testament in which the wolf symbolises the devil and/or a heretic;44 and for the two passages from the Book of Isaiah prophesising the restoration of prelapsarian harmony in the Messianic Kingdom, in which wolves live in peace alongside lambs.45 Circulation of these passages and lupine symbols throughout the ancient and medieval Christian worlds will undoubtedly have strengthened the association of wolves with evil, savage, and deceptive people See Beowulf (lines 3024–7), The Battle of Brunanburh (lines 60–5), Elene (lines 110–13), Exodus (lines 164–9), Judith (204–9). In two other passages from The Fight at Finnesburg (lines 5–7) and Judith (lines 291–6), wolves are associated with unspecified birds. The wolf is also described as the companion of the raven in Exeter Book Riddle 93 (lines 24–30). 39 Lacey, pp. 114–15. 40 Daniel Stahler, Bernd Heinrich, and Douglas Smith, ‘Common Ravens, Corvus corax, Preferentially Associate with Grey Wolves, Canis lupus, as a Foraging Strategy in Winter’, Animal Behaviour, 64 (2002), 283–90 (p. 289). 41 Ibid. 42 Malcolm Drew Donalson, The History of the Wolf in Western Civilization: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2006), p. 2. 43 See Genesis 49.27, Jeremiah 5.6, Ezekiel 22.27, Habakkuk 1.8, and Zephaniah 3.3. 44 The wolves of Matthew 10.16 (‘I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves’), Luke 10.3 (‘Go: Behold I send you as lambs among wolves’), and Acts 20.29 (‘after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock’) are metaphors for heretics, while the wolves of John 10.12 (‘the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and flieth: and the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep’) and Matthew 7.15 (‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves’) may be taken as metaphors for both heretics and the devil. 45 Isaiah 11.6 and Isaiah 65.25. 38

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts and spirits. For many people living in post-conversion England – not only those literate in Latin but those who knew only Old English, and the illiterate as well46 – these biblical animals will have been among the most well-known literary wolves circulating at this time. The wolf and sheep metaphor is especially frequently repeated in exegetic and homiletic material composed by the Church Fathers and ecclesiasts of medieval England, with the passage from John 10 differentiating the good shepherd from the hireling, and the Matthew 7.15 verse describing the wolf in sheep’s clothing, being particularly popular.47 The wolf is also commonly found in early medieval Insular hagiographic texts, in which his reputation for ferocity amplifies the miracle of his taming by a holy figure.48 The enduring popularity of the wolf as a symbol in Christian contexts is perhaps attributable, in part, to the symbol’s continued immediacy. In early medieval England, as in the biblical world, the wolf preyed upon sheep.49 Despite drawing inspiration from real-world wolf behaviours, depictions of biblical wolves are almost always metaphoric, referring not to

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47 48



49

While ‘the great Latinists were mostly monks’, such as Aldhelm, Bede, Boniface, Ælfric, and Byrhtferth, Bede himself described both ‘monks and clerics as being often ignorant of Latin’; M. R. Godden, ‘Literacy in Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, ed. by John Barnard et al., 7 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–2019), i: c.400–1100, ed. by Richard Gameson (2012), pp. 580–90 (p. 584). As such, Bede ‘knew that he must cater in English for clerics without adequate Latin, and Alfred, too, […] saw vernacular translation as a necessary first step in overcoming the ignorance of those in holy orders’; Richard Marsden, ‘Cain’s Face, and Other Problems: The Legacy of the Earliest English Bible Translations’, Reformation, 1 (1996), 29–51 (p. 35). Ælfric also stated that se mæssepreost sceal secgan sunnandagum and mæssedagum þæs godspelles angyt on englisc þam folce (Die hirtenbriefe Ælfrics in altenglischer und lateinischer Fassung, ed. by Bernhard Fehr, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa, 9 (Hamburg: Grand, 1914), p. 14) ‘on Sundays and on mass-days, the priest must tell the people the Gospel’s meaning in English’, a task for which ‘a translation of the Gospels would be a prerequisite – or a set or two of vernacular homilies on the Gospels’ such as those composed by Ælfric himself, which do appear to have served this function; Roy Michael Liuzza, ‘Who Read the Gospels in Old English?’, in Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson, ed. by Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 3–24 (p. 14). Those wolves found in the Bible, then, and especially those found in the Gospels, may have reached both the illiterate and those literate only in Old English through translations, sermons, homilies, and exegesis. See p. 7 n.44 above. See chapter four below for the tamed wolf in the passiones Eadmundi. Other examples include the Welsh Vita Sancti Tathei and Vita Sancti Bernachius, and the Irish Vita S. Albei, Vita S. Cainnechi, Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick, and Cogitosus’s Vita Sanctae Brigidae. See p. 5 above.

8

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story animals but to people considered akin to them in some way. Similarly, in the Old English corpus many instances of the term wulf do not refer to the animal; rather, it ‘is often “applied to a cruel person”’ and used in words and phrases such as ‘se awyrgda wulf (the devil) […] wulfes-heafod (out law), wæl-wulf (warrior), wulf-heort (cruel), […] heoru-wulf (warrior), here-wulf (warrior), [and] hilde-wulf (warrior)’.50 Yet the animal could also be appropriated as a positive image. Wulfstan famously punned upon the prefix of his name in his Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (‘Sermon of the Wolf to the English’), and wulf was a common element of personal names in early medieval England. This animal might also have served as a totem for some pre-Christian families; the name of the East Anglian Wuffing dynasty, for example, meant ‘the kin of the wolf’,51 and this people may have viewed the wolf as a ‘putative ancestral guardian-spirit’.52 Attributes which the wolf was perceived to possess might thus be deemed both desirable and undesirable in the human; the value attached to such traits was highly dependent upon the context in which a person exhibited them. A warrior might be favourably compared to a wolf for his ferocity in battle (assuming, that is, he was fighting for the correct side), while a thief might be compared to a wolf in a much less charitable use of the metaphor. The former might invoke the spirit of the wolf himself; warriors named ulfheðnar, described on numerous occasions throughout the Old Norse corpus,53 donned wolf-pelts to ‘transform’ into the animal. In so doing, they became as ferocious and wild as the creature whose skin they wore, attesting to a pagan perception of the wolf as a powerful hunter whose skill for slaughter was deemed admirable and desirable, at least in the context of conflict. Yet at the same time, in the Old Norse and Old English literary traditions, thieves, murderers, graverobbers and other criminals were frequently compared to wolves, suggesting that other perceived lupine characteristics such as greed, bloodlust, and savagery were deplorable attributes in humans, especially when utilised for illicit ends. The Battle of Maldon presents a microcosm of these contradictory views. The description of the invading Danes as wælwulfas ‘slaughter-wolves’ (line 96) is far from complimentary, speaking to their inveigling and evil

50



51



52



53

Alain Renoir, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: A Noninterpretation’, in Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr, ed. by Jess B. Bessinger, Jr and Robert P. Creed (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1965), pp. 147–63 (p. 163 n.26), citing BT s.v. wulf (p. 1280). Rebecca Pinner, The Cult of St Edmund in Medieval East Anglia (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), p. 222. Sam Newton, The Origins of ‘Beowulf’ and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia (Cambridge: Brewer, 1993), p. 108; see p. 127 below. See p. 170 below.

9

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts natures (lines 86 and 90). Yet in contrast, a wigan wigheardne ‘brave warrior’ belonging to the English army (line 75) is named Wulfstan, whose son, Wulfmær, caflice ‘valiantly’ (line 153) avenges his fallen lord, Byrhtnoth, by returning the spear which struck him into the body of its owner. Here, as elsewhere, whether wolfishness is deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends upon the person to whom the epithet refers; the ends towards which they direct their lupine attributes; and which of the wolf’s characteristics they choose to imitate. In this poem, the wulf-named warriors act with unwavering courage and admirable battle prowess in defence of England, in contrast with the Vikings whose wolfishness is expressed in wily natures and evil purpose. Perhaps most tellingly, Wulfmær’s brave actions are immediately contrasted by the behaviour of another of the wælwulfas ‘slaughter-wolves’ (line 96), who approaches Byrhtnoth’s injured body with the intention of plundering it for treasure (lines 159–61). This echoes the behaviour of the lupine Beast of Battle, and indeed, the wolf-like Vikings of Maldon complete the Beast of Battle triad in this poem.54 While the actions of these topos-wolves therefore bespeak the ‘fear of the beast as an irrational, violent, insatiable creature’, the description of the wolf-like warriors mimicking their behaviour betrays the fear of the human ‘as an irrational, violent, insatiable creature’, ‘anxiety over the human loss of inhibitions’, and ‘fear of the projected beast in oneself’ and of ‘one’s own nature’.55 Although the absorption of human flesh into the body of the wolf ‘inappropriately blurred the lines between humans and animals’,56 people were equally capable of disrupting these boundaries themselves, by adopting the characteristics and behaviours of wolves which were deemed inappropriate for humans to emulate. The actions of a person who plundered a corpse thus called into question the limits and potentials of humanity and animality, rationality and irrationality, and the uncomfortable ease with which lupine behaviours could bleed into the human. Perhaps in an attempt to resolve such anxieties regarding the wolf within, two Frankish laws proclaimed that graverobbers were to be outlawed. He who acted like a wolf was treated as one, driven out of the community to live in the wastes alongside the animals whose behaviour he imitated, ‘outcast’ from both society and human status. These laws designated such outlaws as wargi, a term of contested meaning but the Old Norse cognate of which,57 vargr, could mean both ‘outlaw’ or ‘criminal’, as 56 54 55



57

See Griffith, ‘Convention’, p. 191. Lopez, p. 140. Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 53. Here, as is the norm ‘in studies dealing with the Anglo-Scandinavian linguistic contact during the Viking Age’, the term ‘Norse’ is used ‘to refer in general

10

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story well as ‘wolf’. As will be seen in chapter one, although the Old English cognate wearg never gained such a dual denotation, it is often used of criminals and outcasts who are depicted as wolf-like, while the actions of outcasts and criminals elsewhere – particularly the committing of rapacious crimes such as thievery or graverobbing, as seen above – are compared to the behaviour of the wolf in numerous Old English and Old Norse texts. In being designated a wolf, the outlaw’s humanity was conceptually, literally, and sometimes legally revoked in a proclamation which served to define and maintain the boundaries between ‘human’ and ‘animal’. Yet, paradoxically, the perceived identity slippage between outcasts and wolves did not neatly separate the animalistic rogue from ‘civilised’ society, but reinforced the notion of fluidity between human and animal. No Old English text embodies this paradox more fully than the short yet highly complex Wulf and Eadwacer, a poem spoken by a nameless female narrator lamenting the absence of her lover, Wulf. As will be seen in chapter three, these characters can be read both as wolves and wolfish outcasts, the poem playing upon the indistinct boundary between the two with its litany of cryptic words, abstruse plot, and ambiguous, riddle-like yet elegiac form which denies categorisation, itself reflecting the mutable natures of the figures whose stories it tells. Nonetheless, while the similarities between the wolf and outlaw are emphasised within this poem, the perception of the outlaw as wolf-like and the assumed bloodthirstiness of both wolves and their human counterparts are also questioned and subverted. Despite his lupine name and qualities, Wulf is not portrayed as a criminal worthy of expulsion from the community for a heinous act, but as a sympathetic character pitifully persecuted. Conversely, it is the group of weras ‘men’ hunting him who, despite belonging to both humanity and a human community, act as a savage pack of wolves. For this poet, the lines demarcating the categories of ‘human’ and ‘animal’ – and the behaviour appropriate to each – are imperfectly drawn, subject to violation by both people and wolves alike. Where the bestialisation of the undesirable person failed, a second assurance of human exceptionalism could be used to reinforce the boundaries between human- and animal-kind. This assurance was the ability to communicate with language which, ‘in the Greco-Roman and Patristic traditions, as well as in the medieval traditions that grew out of them, […] was intimately connected with reason and was deemed a necessary prerequisite to the language of the Scandinavian newcomers, regardless of whether they came from the areas which nowadays belong to Norway, Denmark, Sweden, etc.’; Sara M. Pons-Sanz, The Lexical Effects of Anglo-Scandinavian Linguistic Contact on Old English, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 4.

11

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts for rational thought’.58 As such, ‘a long line of philosophers’, from Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers through to Descartes, have ‘distinguished the human from all other creatures on the ground that rational thought and language (Latin ratio, Greek logos) is proper to humankind and absent elsewhere’,59 a view which ‘became embedded in Western, Latin-speaking Christianity above all through Augustine’.60 Several early medieval English poets indeed appear to have considered speech a defining quality of a rational soul, and thereby, of human status, as suggested by the use of the term reordberend ‘speech-bearers’ to refer to humankind in The Dream of the Rood (lines 3 and 89), Daniel (line 123), Christ I (lines 278 and 381), Christ III (lines 1024 and 1368), Elene (line 1282), and Andreas (line 419).61 But just as the wolf/outlaw binary was inadequate in distinguishing human from animal, the method of defining humanity by the ability to communicate with language was likewise neither infallible nor safe from the depredations of wolves since, according to a classical and medieval European superstition, wolves possessed the ability to steal a person’s speech. Like the wolfish outlaw, this lupus in fabula ‘wolf in the story’ voiced and, through its dissemination, perpetuated anxieties about what it meant to be ‘human’, since the wolf could deprive its victim of the property which categorised them not an unthinking animal, but a rational human. The phrase lupus in fabula is borrowed from a proverb which was related to this superstition.62 Used in much the same way as ‘speak of the devil’ is used in modern English parlance, this maxim was spoken when the subject under discussion suddenly entered, forcing the discoursers to abruptly end their conversation and, in this way, ‘stealing’ their speech. Both proverb and superstition frequently appear throughout classical and

58



59



60 61



62

Alison Langdon, ‘Introduction’, in Animal Languages in the Middle Ages: Representations of Interspecies Communication (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 1–9 (p. 2). For more on this, see Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals: The Origins of the Western Debate, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, 54 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 80–6. Susan Crane, ‘Animality’, in A Handbook of Middle English Studies, ed. by Marion Turner (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 123–34 (p. 124). Sorabji, p. 2. For more on this term, see James W. Earl, ‘Trinitarian Language: Augustine, The Dream of the Rood, and Ælfric’, in Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill, ed. by Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs, and Thomas N. Hall (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 63–79 (pp. 72–3), and Mary Hayes, Divine Ventriloquism in Medieval English Literature: Power, Anxiety, Subversion (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 76–8. To avoid overuse of the somewhat cumbersome expression ‘the speech-stealing wolf superstition’, the phrase lupus in fabula is used as shorthand for the superstition throughout this book although, strictly speaking, it pertains to the proverb only.

12

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story early medieval literature, and seem to have enjoyed wide circulation in early medieval England at least in written form; extant manuscripts of the texts in which they appear, and citations of these texts by authors writing in early medieval England, evidence that they were read in Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex from the fifth to eleventh centuries. It is also possible that the superstition entered lay folklore and was transmitted orally, and as such it is impossible to determine the full extent of its cultural impact in early medieval England. Nonetheless, passages from an Anglo-Latin letter and an Old English charm do suggest that their authors may have been familiar with the superstition. The most convincing evidence for the currency of the lupus in fabula in early medieval England, however, is found in two hagiographies detailing the death of St Edmund, the ninth-century king of East Anglia, composed by Abbo of Fleury (in Latin) and Ælfric (who adapted Abbo’s text into Old English), both of whom were well-versed in many of the texts which feature the superstition. These narratives tell of how the kingdom of East Anglia is invaded by the Danes, wolfish agents of the devil who predate upon the innocent Christians over whom Edmund rules as king and shepherd. After slaughtering most of his people, the Danes torture the king when he refuses to cede to their demands for power and tribute. Edmund is unmoved, remaining faithful to Christ and praying to Him even as the heathens separate his head from his body. Afterwards, to ensure that Edmund cannot be interred whole, the Vikings deposit his head deep in the forest before they depart the kingdom. Undeterred, Edmund’s followers search for the head, which miraculously calls them to its location. There, they find it clutched between the legs of a tame wolf, appointed by God as its guardian. In these hagiographies, the lupus in fabula superstition is employed for exegetical ends, specifically in relation to the significance of speech and language in Christian doctrine. Language and the ‘rational joining of words into meaningful speech’ were perceived as gifts from God,63 while all humankind should be ‘bearers’ of His Word (Logos), the speech-act by which Creation originated and embodied by Christ on earth.64 Indeed, the reordberend in all of the above-mentioned poems are not only bearers of speech but of His Logos too. Yet if a person lacked God’s ‘gift of language’,65 or did not use this gift to proclaim His Word, they were considered no better than an animal, as is articulated in Solomon and Saturn I:66

63 64



65 66

David Williams, ‘The Exile as Uncreator’, Mosaic, 8 (1975), 1–14 (p. 4). ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1.1), and ‘the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us’ (John 1.14). Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 4. For more on this, see Marie Nelson, ‘King Solomon’s Magic: The Power of a Written Text’, Oral Tradition, 5 (1990), 20–36 (p. 27).

13

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Unlæde bið on eorþan, unnit lifes, wesðe wisdomes, weallað swa nieten, feldgongende feoh butan gewitte, se þurh ðone cantic ne can Crist geherian. (lines 22–5) [Miserable on earth, leading a purposeless life, their wisdom wasted, wandering like an animal, a field-going cow without reason, are they who do not know how to glorify Christ through song.]

The consequences could be eternal; since people were thought to be judged by the words they spoke,67 bestial speechlessness in life could lead to the damnation of eternal silence in hell.68 Yet the Word was not easy to retain. According to St Ambrose, constant vigilance and faith were required if its ‘bearers’ were to protect the Logos within from Satan and his human agents. If given the opportunity, these metaphorical wolves of the New Testament faciunt ommutescere; mutus est enim qui verbum dei non eadem qua est gloria confitetur ‘will rob him of the power of speech; they will make him dumb – for when we no longer proclaim the glory of the Word of God in all its truth then indeed we are dumb’.69 Likewise, the Danes of the passiones represent the wolfish devil who attempts to silence Edmund’s professions of the Word by attacking his kingdom, torturing him and ultimately, when both fail, by killing him. But even in death, Edmund is not silenced. His decapitated head is miraculously brought to life and its speech returned by God, who also sends a speech-protecting wolf to guard it. While Edmund’s speech marks him as a faithful member of God’s community watched over by Christ the shepherd, in secular contexts speech also served as ‘part of the bond that joined men and sustained communities’, with ‘the model of word-exchange […] a metaphor for community, and the idea of dialogue and of men speaking together […] a wide-spread metaphor for society and social intercourse’ in medieval literature.70 Speech’s opposite, silence, could thus serve as a metaphor for the collapse of community: on two occasions in Beowulf (lines 2458 and 3023), for example, In Christ III, for example, it is stated that on Judgement Day the reordberende ‘speech-bearers’ will arise (line 1024), and lean cumað / werum bi gewyrhtum worda ond dæda, / reordberendum ‘recompense shall come to men according to the merits of their words and deeds, the speech-bearers’ (lines 1366–8). 68 See Soul and Body I, lines 103–15. 69 Sancti Ambrosii opera, pars quarta: Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucan, ed. by Karl Schenkl, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 32.4 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1902), p. 302, and Commentary of Saint Ambrose on the Gospel According to Saint Luke, trans. by Íde M. Ní Riain (Dublin: Halcyon Press, 2001), p. 206. 70 Williams, ‘Exile’, pp. 3–4. 67

14

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story the ruin of society is associated with the silence of the harp.71 Outlawry likewise constituted ‘counsel or community left behind’, the banished person ‘without opportunity of dialogue, forbidden “to exchange words,” and rendered speechless’.72 In turn, his silence was another ‘characteristic associating [him] with the beast which lacks the gift of speech’.73 Indeed, in Maxims I the person who sceal secgan ræd ‘must give counsel’, rune writan ‘write down knowledge’, leoþ gesingan ‘sing poetry’, and lofes gearnian ‘earn praise’ (lines 138–9) – ‘word-exchanges’ which imply, and indeed require, that he is part of a community74 – is contrasted with the ‘unwise man who is an exile and the friend of wolves’,75 an animal which does not ‘exchange words’ with him but only hungre heofeð ‘laments its hunger’ (line 149). When they lose membership of their community and thus the ability to converse with others, therefore, the outlaw becomes a victim of his own wolfishness, a lupus in his own fabula.76 Precisely such a fate, it is suggested in chapter five, befalls the Grendelkin of Beowulf who, as part of their notoriously multi-faceted identities, may be considered wolfish outlaws and speech-stealers who threaten a community built upon Godgiven ‘word-exchange’.77 The warrior who saves this community, Beowulf, possesses numerous traits which mirror the lupine qualities of the Grendelkin. Yet, despite mirroring the monsters, the hero remains exactly that, never transgressing the boundary between human and monster. Instead, through his faith in God, this ‘good’ lupus in fabula weaponises his wolfishness to silence the Grendelkin and end the speech-stealing ‘feud’ these wolf-like, devilish monsters began.

Wolves in the Medieval and Modern Worlds Using an ecocritical approach which foregrounds the wolves and wolfen creatures within Wulf and Eadwacer, the passiones Eadmundi, and Beowulf, this book offers fresh interpretations of each text within an historicist framework,

71

74 75 72 73



76



77

See John D. Niles, ‘Reconceiving Beowulf: Poetry as Social Praxis’, College English, 61 (1998), 143–66 (pp. 149–50). Williams, ‘Exile’, pp. 1 and 4 respectively. Ibid., p. 4. See pp. 188 and 190 below. Craig Williamson, trans., The Complete Old English Poems, intro. by Tom Shippey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), p. 492. See pp. 31–3 for more on this passage. It has been hypothesised that both the wolf/outlaw association and the speech-stealing wolf superstition originated with legends of the werewolf, a bestial outlaw from humankind who becomes speechless post-transformation; see pp. 53 and 86–7 below. Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 3.

15

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts suggesting that the portrayal of these lupine characters is dependent upon literary and cultural antecedents; one inherited from the classical tradition which was disseminated widely throughout Roman and early medieval Europe, and one gained from analogous tradition shared between early medieval England and Scandinavia, the first written records of which are found in the laws which governed the early Frankish kingdoms. As noted earlier, however, the wolf was found not only in the cultural landscape, but was also an ever-present part of many natural environments in early medieval England. Wolves both real and imagined played their part in shaping the representations of these animals in Old English and Anglo-Latin literature, acting as both ‘active agent[s] and passive slate[s] upon which humans scratch and erase meaning’.78 As such, the approach to the material analysed in this book is in part borrowed from Susan Crane who, in her monograph Animal Encounters, ‘emphasize[s] the living animal by connecting written representations to perspectives from natural science, animal training, husbandry, and historical studies’ in order to ‘look for moments when textual representation is porous to experience – when the somatic texture of embodied animal encounters leaves an imprint on artful language’.79 Yet mapping the behaviour of modern wolves onto that of the wolves found in early medieval England is not an entirely unobjectionable approach, since it is unlikely that wolf behaviour has remained fixed over the past millennium. Wolf-human relations, in particular, have changed considerably due to the invention of firearms and their use in hunting, as well as the ‘persistent and organised extermination campaigns’ which the animals have suffered at the hands of humans.80 In recent years the relationship has shifted once more, with wolves becoming the focus of conservation, protection, and nonlethal management efforts.81 This being said, while it is unlikely that wolves today are identical to their medieval ancestors, it is equally improbable that wolves have changed so radically over the course of the previous millennium – in ecological terms, the blink of an eye82 – that ethological observations made by wolf biologists today are entirely irrelevant to the wolves of early medieval England.83 Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 9. Crane, Animal Encounters, p. 5. 80 Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 1. 81 Ibid. 82 To put this one-thousand-year span into perspective, the geological epoch in which we are currently living, the Holocene, began roughly 11,650 years ago. Canis lupus has been present in the British Isles for the past 200,000 years since its evolution from an earlier, smaller species of wolf known as Canis mosbachensis, and it has remained largely unchanged since. 83 See Lacey, p. 17. 78 79

16

Introduction: The Wolf in This Story As noted above, the corpse-scavenging behaviour of the lupine Beast of Battle is likely based upon real wolf behaviour, as is the association between ravens and wolves depicted within this topos which, remaining observable today, is indicative of an ‘ancient evolved relationship’.84 This suggests that these canids and corvids have exhibited such behaviours for at least a millennium, if not longer, and that those living in early medieval England may have witnessed them first-hand. Indeed, the scarcity of surviving accounts of real wolves and their behaviour may simply be because such knowledge was widespread, as ‘much engagement between humans and animals was governed by unconscious thought and therefore has probably gone unremarked within written sources’.85 Those who experienced the most frequent and prolonged contact with wolves – particularly those engaged in pastoral occupations – are also highly unlikely to have committed their knowledge to parchment, although the rare records of real wolves by such figures which do exist ‘indicate a more informed understanding of animal behaviour based on working relationships with both wild and domestic fauna’.86 Furthermore, that wulf and ulfr feature in a significant number of Old English place-names, which ‘are highly demotic because they were frequently created by those living within the local landscape, thus revealing localized perceptions and knowledge’,87 also indicates awareness of wolves in the landscape by those local to the many areas which they inhabited. It is not necessarily the case, therefore, that ‘the conventional and symbolic associations’ of animals ‘t[ook] precedence over quotidian experience’.88 Rather, since ‘cultural meanings’ are often ‘constructed from a set of salient traits with which a particular kind of animal can be associated’,89 real-world wolf behaviour may be considered a basis for the ‘cultural’ wolf of the early medieval English imagination. The perceived savagery of wolves, for example, which is based upon real-world predatory behaviour (mis)interpreted by humans, primes them for service as a repository of

84 85



86 87



88



89

See pp. 6–7 above. Kristopher Poole, ‘Gone to the Dogs? Negotiating the Human-Animal Boundary in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Archaeologies of Rules and Regulation: Between Text and Practice, ed. by Barbara Hausmair et al. (New York, NY: Berghahn, 2018), pp. 238–53 (pp. 238–9). Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 25. Kristopher Poole, ‘Foxes and Badgers in Anglo-Saxon Life and Landscape’, Archaeological Journal, 172 (2015), 389–422 (p. 413). David Salter, Holy and Noble Beasts: Encounters with Animals in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Brewer, 2001), p. 7. Rômulo Romeu Nóbrega Alves and Raynner Rilke Duarte Barboza, ‘The Role of Animals in Human Culture’, in Ethnozoology: Animals in Our Lives, ed. by Rômulo Romeu Nóbrega Alves and Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque (London: Academic Press, 2018), pp. 277–301 (p. 277).

17

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts all of those traits which humankind desires to expel: bloodlust, violence, and wild uncontrollability.90 As Lopez writes: in all literature in which it appears throughout history, the wolf has been ‘appraised by all sorts of men but utter[ed] itself not a word’.91 Hence, in order to gain a full understanding of the role of any animal in literature and culture, we must utilise an approach which ‘mediates between semiotic culturalism on the one hand and factual naturalism on the other’.92 This book seeks to successfully balance the two.



90



91 92

See Williams, ‘Bravado’, pp. 178–9, in which the author discusses how ‘the observable characteristics’ of wolves (and boars) are reflected in the art and literature of early medieval England. Lopez, p. 206. Roland Borgards, ‘Introduction: Cultural and Literary Animal Studies’, Journal of Literary Theory, 9 (2015), 155–60 (p. 156).

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1 A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws

I

n his 1930 monograph Civilization and Its Discontents (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur), Sigmund Freud remarked that: human beings are not gentle creatures in need of love, at most able to defend themselves if attacked; on the contrary, they can count a powerful share of aggression among their instinctual endowments. Hence, their neighbour is […] someone who tempts them to take out their aggression on him, […] to take possession of his goods, to humiliate and cause him pain, to torture and kill him. Homo homini lupus.1

This final phrase, meaning ‘man is a wolf to man’, is a Latin proverb borrowed from Plautus’s Asinaria. Although the original meaning is related to the unknown quantity of the stranger (lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit ‘man is a wolf and not a man toward a man when he doesn’t know what he’s like’),2 today the proverb is often used in the sense employed by Freud, as shorthand to express that humans are often driven by greed and savagery, behaviours deemed typical of wolves. This metaphor has been in use for over a millennium. A sixth-century Frankish law-code prescribed that a graverobber should be outlawed and declared a wargus, a term which may refer to the malefactor’s ‘re-identification […] as a “wolf” or as a thing associated with wolfishness’.3 Later, the Old Norse cognate of wargus, vargr, meant both ‘wolf’ and ‘outlaw’, and was used of graverobbers and malefactors guilty of other rapacious crimes in both legal and literary contexts. The dual denotation of vargr suggests that the association between abjected criminal figure and wolf was pervasive and culturally ingrained, to the extent that this conceptual

1



2



3

Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. by David McLintock and intro. by Leo Bersani (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 48. Asinaria, or The Comedy of Asses, in Plautus: Amphitryon. The Comedy of Asses. The Pot of Gold. The Two Bacchises. The Captives, ed. and trans. by Wolfgang de Melo, Loeb Classical Library, 60 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 133–248 (pp. 194–5). Sarah L. Higley, ‘Finding the Man Under the Skin: Identity, Monstrosity, Expulsion, and the Werewolf’, in The Shadow-walkers: Jacob Grimm’s Mythology of the Monstrous, ed. by T. A. Shippey, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 14 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 335–78 (p. 352).

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts similarity became part of the linguistic brickwork of Old Norse. While the Old English cognate of wargus and vargr, wearg ‘criminal’, does not possess a secondary lupine meaning, the English tradition did share this conception of the outlawed graverobber or criminal as wolf-like. Outlawry as a punishment for behaviours considered proper to wolves was both literal and conceptual. A proclamation of outlawry meant a person was no longer afforded the legal protections enjoyed by other members of the community, forcing them to flee from society until they could pay recompense, or to permanently abandon it upon pain of death.4 Killable with impunity and driven away from civilisation, they were outlawed not only from human society but also from human status, both protecting the community from a dangerous, wolfish malefactor, but also safeguarding the meaning of ‘humanity’ by deeming those who surrendered to the base and depraved levels of this most savage of animal to no longer be human. ‘Outlaw’, rather than ‘exile’, is the term employed throughout this book, though the difference between the two is ‘tricky to delineate’.5 ‘Exile’ can refer to both the victim of ‘banishment […] according to an edict or judicial sentence’, as well as to a person who undertakes a ‘prolonged absence from [his] native country or a place regarded as home, endured by force of circumstances or voluntarily undergone’.6 ‘Outlaw’, on the other hand, can refer to ‘a person declared to be outside the law and deprived of its benefits and protection; a person under sentence of outlawry’, and ‘a person who lives without regard for the law; a miscreant, felon, criminal, esp. one on the run from a law enforcement agency’.7 ‘Outcast’, meanwhile, is not used in judicial contexts but is a more general term referring

4



5



6 7

For example, in the seventh-century Laws of Ine it is stated that a person due the death penalty who fled to a church could be spared if he paid compensation; see ‘The Laws of Ine’, in The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. and trans. by F. L. Attenborough (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), pp. 36– 61 (p. 38). In the tenth-century laws of Æthelstan, however, it is adjudged that a person who fought or fled after being caught stealing should be shown no mercy, and that a thief who persistently transgressed should nullo modo vita dignus habeatur; non per socnam, non per pecuniam ‘in no way be judged worthy of life, neither by claiming the right of protection nor by making monetary payment’; ‘II Æthelstan’ and ‘IV Æthelstan’, in Laws, ed. and trans. by Attenborough, pp. 126–42 (p. 126), and pp. 146–51 (pp. 148–9) respectively. Jeremy DeAngelo, Outlawry, Liminality, and Sanctity in the Literature of the Early Medieval North Atlantic (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), p. 14. See also Melissa Sartore, Outlawry, Governance, and Law in Medieval England, American University Studies. Series 9: History, 206 (New York, NY: Lang, 2013), pp. 7–40. OED s.v. exile, n.1 [accessed 7 October 2019]. OED s.v. outlaw, n. and adj. [accessed 7 October 2019].

20

A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws to ‘a person who has been cast out (of a society, institution, etc.); a person ostracized by his or her friends or social group; an exile, a homeless vagabond; a lowly or humble person’, or ‘a sinner, a person rejected by God’.8 As these definitions show, the ‘exile’ and ‘outlaw’ share a considerable degree of overlap, and both figures may be described as ‘outcast’.9 However, for the sake of clarity a basic binary is here established between the sympathetic ‘exile’ as a person separated from society by the workings of wyrd ‘fate’10 or someone who leaves it for spiritual reasons,11 as opposed to the ‘outlaw’ or ‘outcast’ as a person or creature who is rejected by their community and/or by God by their own doing.12 That said, none of the wolfish outcasts and weargas under consideration in this book are ‘outlaws’ in a strictly legalistic sense, but are characters whose fates may be ‘modeled after outlawry without in fact being such 8 9





10



11



12

OED s.v. outcast, n.1 [accessed 7 October 2019]. A similar problem is presented by Old English wrecca, a term which ‘relates quite closely to exile’, but whose ‘precise meaning is dependent on context’; DeAngelo, p. 44. Defined in BT as ‘one driven from his own country, a wanderer in foreign lands, an exile, a stranger, pilgrim’, ‘a wretch, an evil person’, ‘a wretched person, a miserable, feeble creature’, and ‘a wretched, unhappy, miserable, poor person’, wrecca is used of a variety of characters, including the prototypical outlaw Cain as well as his descendant, Grendel, but also of the sympathetic exiled speaker of The Wanderer; BT s.v. wrecca, p. 1273. The challenges associated with interpreting this term thus reflect the difficulties in ‘delineating between an outlaw rightly condemned as a criminal or one unfairly convicted and forced into dire straits’ (the latter here designated as an ‘exile’), which ‘is a subtle matter’; DeAngelo, p. 171, and for more on this, see ibid., pp. 44–7. The indistinction between the outlaw and wrongfully condemned exile is also discussed in relation to Wulf and Eadwacer in chapter three below. See Frank Bessai, ‘Comitatus and Exile in Old English Poetry’, Culture, 25 (1964), 130–44 (p. 140). See DeAngelo, p. 141. ‘Exile’ is also used to describe the state of humankind in a postlapsarian world, with ‘mortal life […] a time of exile and separation from the true homeland in eternity’; Patricia Silber, ‘Hunferth and the Paths of Exile’, In geardagum, 17 (1996), 15–30 (p. 18), and see also Alvin A. Lee, The Guest-hall of Eden: Four Essays on the Design of Old English Poetry (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 137–8. While all people may be conceived as exiles from God, therefore, some might be specifically outlawed by Him, as were Satan, Cain, and Grendel (see pp. 45–6 and 47–8 below). Unlike the exiled person who must spend their life aspiring to ‘the true homeland in eternity’ (Silber, ‘Exile’, p. 18) – a purpose for which exile in the physical world could serve – outlaws from God lived ‘without hope of return’ to Him; Bessai, p. 142. This might be compared to the ‘distinction between the “constitutional” and “sympathetic” werewolf: the first […] is a man who becomes entirely wolf, whose body and soul are polluted by bestiality […]; whereas the second, an innocent victim of a curse, retains his human sense and reason under his transformed pelt – a “fake” werewolf’; Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 349.

21

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts in legal or practical actuality’;13 they need not – and often do not – have a clearly defined status (or lack thereof) under the law, but are ‘outcasts’ in a more general sense. Some are also designated as wearg, a word found only in literary contexts and which does not feature in any extant early English law tracts to describe the outlaw, unlike such terms as utlah and flyma.14 Rather, the nominal wearg means ‘criminal’ (although the committing of a crime could sometimes be the cause or a consequence of outlawry),15 while the adjectival form, used of ‘a miserable one in general, a wretch to be shunned and execrated’,16 describes the referent’s ‘outcast’ status (though which was sometimes a result of crimes perpetrated by them). The wolfish outcasts and weargas under consideration, therefore, may be ‘villain[s]’, ‘criminal[s]’, or ‘accursed’ beings,17 but they are not ‘outlaws’ in a strictly legalistic sense. Instead, they are figures of ‘an outsider status understood more broadly than strict outlawry can convey’.18

Wargi, Wolf-Heads, and Wolfish Outlaws ‘Strict outlawry’ is nevertheless where this inquiry finds a natural starting point. In two Frankish law-codes of the c. sixth and seventh centuries, the Pactus legis Salicae and the Lex Ribuaria, expulsion from the community is the punishment prescribed for the graverobber: Si quis corpus iam sepultum effordierit et expoliaverit et ei fuerit adprobatum, […] uuargus sit usque in diem illam, quam ille cum parentibus ipsius defuncti conveniat, ut et ipsi pro eo rogare debeant, ut ei inter homines liceat accedere.19 [If anyone exhumes and plunders a corpse already buried […], and it can be proven that he did this, let him become an outlaw (uuargus) until that day when he comes to an agreement with the relatives of the deceased, so that they must ask that he be allowed (again) to go among men.]20 15 16 13 14

19 17 18



20

DeAngelo, p. 15. See ibid., p. 59. See pp. 44–5 below. J. M. Hart, ‘OE. werg, werig “Accursed”; wergan “to Curse.”’, Modern Language Notes, 22 (1907), 220–2 (p. 221). BT s.v. wearg(-h), p. 1177, and wearg, p. 1177. DeAngelo, p. 15. Pactus legis Salicae, ed. by Karl August Eckhardt, MGH, Leges Nationum Germanicarum, 4.1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1962), pp. 206–7. Pactus legis Salicae, in Laws of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks, trans. by Theodore John Rivers, AMS Studies in the Middle Ages, 8 (New York, NY: AMS Press, 1987), pp. 39–112 (p. 102).

22

A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws Si autem eum ex homo traxerit et expoliaverit, 200 sol. cum capitale et dilatura culpabilis iudicetur, vel wargus sit, usque ad parentibus satisfecerit.21 [If, however, he disinters a corpse and plunders it, let him be held liable for 200 solidi in addition to (the property’s) value and a fine for damages, or let him become an outlaw (wargus) until he satisfies the (deceased’s) relatives.]22

In both passages wargus clearly refers to outlawry, as the person described as such is ‘compelled to live outside society until the relatives of the injured party ask the judge to let him return, until which time nobody, not even his next of kin or relatives can give him bread or shelter’.23 Since its Old Norse cognate, vargr, could mean both ‘wolf’ and ‘outlaw’,24 it is often suggested that wargus may have possessed the same dual denotation. Yet such backwards reasoning does not provide sufficient evidence to conclude that wargus had a lupine meaning. Indeed, it is unlikely that the meaning of wargus – whether lupine or not – influenced the semantic range of vargr, as suggested by alterations made to the abovequoted passage of the Pactus legis Salicae in its later redactions (known as the Lex Salica). In one redaction, composed during the reign of Pepin the Younger (751 to 768), uuargus is clarified with the phrase id est expellis25 ‘that is, they are driven out’. Likewise, in a revision of this text by Pepin’s son, Charlemagne, which is known as the Lex Salica emendata, the phrase is followed by the explanation hoc est expulsus de eodem pago ‘that is, driven out from the same village’.26 Another redaction of the Lex Salica, which seems to have been based on the Lex Salica emendata, describes this clause

21



22



23



24



25



26

Lex Ribuaria, ed. by Franz Beyerle and Rudolf Buchner, MGH, Leges Nationum Germanicarum, 3.2 (Hannover: Hahn, 1954), p. 132. Lex Ribuaria, in Laws of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks, trans. by Rivers, pp. 167–214 (p. 211). Tamás Nótári, ‘The State of Facts of Robbing of a Grave in Early Medieval German Laws’, Acta Juridica Hungarica, 53 (2012), 236–54 (p. 245). See the section ‘Old Norse vargr’ below. The Frankish laws have been compared to a Hittite law (c. 1600 bc) which states that ‘if anyone abducts a woman and if those who go after/behind, three persons or two persons, are killed, there will be no compensation. “You have become a wolf”’; Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 352, quoting from Jos Weitenberg, ‘The Meaning of the Expression “To Become a Wolf” in Hittite’, in Perspectives on Indo-European Language, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Edgar C. Polomé, ed. by Roger Pearson, Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series, 7 and 9, 2 vols (McLean, VA: Institute for the Study of Man, 1991–2), i (1991), pp. 189–98 (p. 189). ‘Lex Salica’: The Ten Texts with the Glosses and the ‘Lex Emendata’. With Notes on the Frankish Words in the Lex Salica by H. Kern, ed. by J. H. Hessels (London: John Murray, 1880), col. 357. Ibid., col. 359.

23

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts as an antiqua lege ‘ancient law’.27 All of these emendations to later versions of the laws suggest that by the eighth century, wargus was an obscure and relatively unknown – if not entirely incomprehensible – term.28 Despite this, wargus reappears over five centuries later in a twelfth-century English law-code, the Leges Henrici Primi: Et si quis corpus in terra vel noffo vel petra vel pyramide vel structura qualibet positum sceleratis infamationibus effodere vel exspoliare presumpserit, wargus habeatur. [If anyone dares to dig up or despoil, in scandalous and criminal fashion, a body buried in the ground or in a coffin or a rock or a pyramid or any structure, he shall be regarded as an outlaw.]29

Many of the clauses in these Leges are derived ‘from sources with little or nothing to do with English law’, including a chapter ‘lifted almost word for word’ from the Lex Ribuaria.30 It thus seems likely that, as in the earlier text, wargus here means ‘outlaw’. Though much of the Leges Henrici Primi is drawn from foreign legal codes, the clause which directly precedes the above-quoted passage incorporates a term found in an early medieval English law-code, the Walreaf. In this earlier text, which was ‘probably designed to augment Æthelred’s Wantage code (III Æthelred)’,31 it is declared that Walreaf is niðinges dæde ‘walreaf is the niðing’s deed’.32 Niðing is defined in BT as ‘a villain, one who commits a vile action’,33 though it has also been interpreted as ‘outlaw’.34 In the Leges Henrici Primi, meanwhile, it is stated that Weilref dicimus si quis mortuum refabit armis aut vestibus aut prorsus aliquibus, aut tumulatum aut tumulandum ‘We call it wælreaf if someone strips a dead man of his arms or

27 28



29



30



31



32



33 34

Ibid., col. 358. Maurizio Lupoi, The Origins of the European Legal Order, trans. by Adrian Belton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 372. Leges Henrici Primi, ed. and trans. by L. J. Downer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 260–1. Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999– ), i: Legislation and Its Limits (1999), p. 414. Levi Roach, ‘Law Codes and Legal Norms in Later Anglo-Saxon England’, Historical Research, 86 (2013), 465–86 (p. 478). ‘Walreaf’, in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. by Felix Liebermann, 3 vols (Halle: Niemeyer, 1903-16), i: Text und Übersetzung (1903), p. 392. BT s.v. nīþing, p. 723. Wormald, p. 372. It has also been noted that ‘vargr and níðingr are sometimes interchangeable terms in Old Norse laws’; Bernt Øyvind Thorvaldsen, ‘The Níðingr and the Wolf’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 7 (2011), 171–96 (p. 188). Perhaps it is suggestive that this same term which describes a graverobber in the Walreaf law is interchangeable with vargr ‘wolf’/’outlaw’ in Old Norse.

24

A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws clothing or indeed anything, whether he is buried or to be buried’.35 Wælreaf, literally meaning ‘slaughter-spoil[ing]’, thus refers to graverobbing, the perpetrator’s fate to be outlawed (declared a wargus) in the Leges Henrici Primi concurring with the earlier description of this crime as a niðinges dæde ‘outlaw’s deed’ in the Walreaf law-code. In poetic contexts wælreaf denotes ‘what is taken from the slain, spoil taken in war’36 as, for example, in Beowulf, when Hygelac is described as having wælreaf werede ‘protected his spoils’ during a war with the Frisians (line 1205). Yet such ‘spoils’ did not only take the form of treasures plundered from slain warriors, but also the corpses themselves – at least from the point of view of the wolf. This animal ne huru wæl wepeð ‘certainly does not mourn the slain’ or morþorcwealm mæcga ‘the slaughter of men’, but a mare wille ‘wishes for more’ (Maxims I, lines 150–1), and is frequently depicted scavenging from the corpses of fallen warriors along with the other Beasts of Battle, as seen in Beowulf: nalles hearpan sweg wigend weccean, ac se wonna hrefn fus ofer fægum fela reordian, earne secgan hu him æt æte speow, þenden he wið wulf wæl reafode. (lines 3023–7) [it is not the song of the harp that must wake the warrior, but the sound of the dark raven, hastening after the doomed to eat his fill and telling the eagle how he had triumphed from the feast when he plundered the slain with the wolf.]

The phrase wæl reafode ‘plundered the slain’ not only recalls Hygelac’s wælreaf ‘spoils’ (line 1205), but it also echoes another phrase from the description of Hygelac’s battle: wyrsan wigfrecan wæl reafedon / æfter guðsceare ‘an inferior warrior plundered the slain after the war-shearing’ (lines 1212–13). The identity of this wigfreca ‘warrior’ is ambiguous; it could refer to one of the victors plundering dead bodies for treasure, but it is equally possible that it refers to a Beast of Battle picking at the flesh of the corpses.37 The linguistic overlap of this phrase with the later description of Leges Henrici Primi, ed. and trans. by Downer, pp. 260–1. BT s.v. wæl-reāf, p. 1154. 37 Indeed, freca (‘bold one, warrior’; DOE s.v. freca [accessed 7 October 2019]) is cognate with Norse freki ‘wolf’ (Pons-Sanz, Lexical Effects, p. 446), while the adjectival frec ‘greedy, voracious, gluttonous’ is used of both people and animals; DOE s.v. frec [accessed 7 October 2019]. A similar overlap between wolf and human is seen in another instance of the Beast of Battle topos in The Fight at Finnesburg, in which the phrase gylleð græghama ‘howling grey-coats’ (line 6) could refer to both wolves and warriors; see Griffith, ‘Convention’, p. 191. 35 36

25

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts the Beasts having wæl reafode ‘plundered the slain’, as well as the ambiguous identity of the wigfreca ‘warrior’, ‘suggest[] that human plunder can be equated – at least lexically – with the plundering of carrion eaters’,38 perhaps bespeaking a metaphorical blurring of, or conceptual association between, the behaviour of the corpse-picking wolf and the corpse-plundering human.39 Perhaps, then, the graverobbing wargus (or perpetrator of walreaf) could have been considered wolf-like, with the proclamation of outlawry in the Leges revoking his status as human in accordance with the bestial nature of his crime.40 Wæl and wulf are also collocated in a passage from Ælfric’s Passio sancti Albani martyris: Is nu eac to witenne þæt man witnað foroft ða arleasan sceaðan and þa swicolan ðeofas, ac hi nabbað nan edlean æt þam ælmihtigan gode, ac swyðor þa ecean witu for heora wælhreownysse, forðan þe hi leofodon be reaflace swa swa reðe wulfas, and þam rihtwisum ætbrudon heora bigleofan foroft.41 [To wit, just as men punish dishonourable criminals and deceitful thieves at the present time, these people also will not have any reward at all from the Almighty God, but instead eternal torments for their cruelty, because they lived by plundering like savage wolves, and they often took from the righteous their sustenance.]

Here, Ælfric conceptualises theft as a rapacious act not appropriate to humans, who ought to adhere to the rules of society, but as concurrent with the behaviour of wolves, who are ‘not bound by loyalty, law, propriety, or ritual – only by their appetite’.42 This implies that ‘humanity’ is ‘not a biological, but a spiritual state of being’,43 and that a person’s status as human could thus be conceptually revoked if he ‘devolve[d] willfully into a bestial form of existence’.44

38



39



40 41



42 43



44

Mary Kate Hurley, Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2021), p. 180. See Heide Estes, Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes: Ecotheory and the Environmental Imagination (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), p. 133. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 190. Passio sancti Albani martyris, in Ælfric’s ‘Lives of Saints’, Being a Set of Sermons on Saints’ Days Formerly Observed by the English Church, ed. and trans. by Walter W. Skeat, EETS OS, 76, 82, 94, and 114, 2 vols (London: Trübner, 1881–1900), i (1881), pp. 414–31 (p. 424). Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 375. Sarah Harlan-Haughey, Ecology of the English Outlaw in Medieval Literature: From Fen to Greenwood (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 24. Matthew E. Spears, ‘Identifying with the Beast: Animality, Subjectivity, and Society in Anglo-Saxon England’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 2017), p. 31.

26

A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws Similarly, the Mermedonians of Andreas are described as wælwulfas ‘slaughter-wolves’ (line 149), their cannibalistic predations rendering them more wolf-like than human.45 The same term is also used of the Vikings in The Battle of Maldon (line 96), again ‘reducing [them] to a level below humanity’.46 The bestiality of the Vikings in particular is emphasised by the fact that they complete the Beast of Battle triad,47 these people thus being representative of, and blurred with, the animal who will plunder the corpses of the fallen warriors which they leave in their wake, and which the Vikings themselves will later scavenge from (lines 159–61). In the same vein, the Egyptian warriors in Exodus are described as heoruwulfas ‘sword-wolves’ (line 181), and are thus blurred with the wulfas ‘wolves’ who appear as part of the Beast of Battle triad only a few lines prior (lines 162–9). Likewise, the Elamites in Genesis A are described by the similar word herewulfas ‘battle-wolves’ (line 2015) as well as the term hildewulfas ‘battle-wolves’ (line 2051), in between two references to the avian Beasts of Battle (lines 1983–5 and 2087–9). Like the animals to which they are likened, the Elamites are also seen plundering the city of the defeated (lines 2005–13), ‘picking at the corpse of an entire people who, after being decimated in combat, are as defenseless as a lifeless body’.48 Each of the foregoing examples bespeak ‘humanity’s fear of itself and what it might become’,49 the ‘socio-psychological’ transformation of these malefactors into a wolf50 separating them from humanity and thus suggesting that ‘the notion that we can be like wolves in our […] violence, and appetite must be forcefully expelled’.51 This is also suggested by the existence of the term wulfheafedtreo ‘wolf-head-tree’, which refers to an object which may be the gallows in Exeter Book Riddle 55 (line 12).52 Wulfheafed

45 46

49 47 48

52 50 51

See pp. 46–7 below for more on Andreas’s Mermedonians. Jennifer Neville, Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 27 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 56. See Griffith, ‘Convention’, p. 191. Spears, p. 132. Timothy S. Jones, Outlawry in Medieval Literature (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 28. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 191. Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 339. There is no accepted solution for this riddle, although the object’s description as a wulfheafedtreo gives ‘a tantalizing clue’ as to its identity. It seems likely that wulfheafed ‘wolf-head’ refers to an outlaw or criminal, whose ‘tree’ is the gallows (John D. Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), p. 65), especially since the gallows is also termed a gealgtreow ‘gallows-tree’ in The Dream of the Rood (line 146), Beowulf (line 2940), and in ‘a set of charter-bounds dated 956, indicating that gallows did not have to be artificially constructed’ to be understood as such (Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland, ‘An

27

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts ‘wolf-head’ seems to function as a metaphor for ‘criminal’ or ‘outlaw’, as is suggested by the existence of an analogous term, wluesheued ‘wolf-head’, found in the twelfth-century Leges Edwardi Confessoris.53 Here, a criminal convicted of breaking the Church’s peace, who eorum sententiam defugiendo vel superbe contempnendo parvipenderit ‘scorns their sentence by fleeing or by arrogantly contemning (it)’, is pronounced an outlaw to be hunted and either brought into captivity or killed, since Lupinum enim capud gerit a die utlagationis sue, quod ab Anglis wluesheued nominatur ‘From the day of his outlawry he bears a wolf’s head, which is called wluesheued [“wolf-head”] by the English’.54 Having paid no heed to human standards of behaviour in his crime, nor to the rule of law in his flight (he ‘scorns their sentence’), this person is rendered sub-human by judicial edict, his status as ‘human’ formally revoked. Likewise, perhaps the wulfheafed was a criminal and/or outlaw who had been stripped of their human status and reidentified as a wolf-headed being, fated to hang to death on their ‘tree’, the gallows.



53



54

Introduction to Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World’, in Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. by Michael D. J. Bintley and Michael G. Shapland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 1–18 (p. 7)); since in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, ‘wolf-head’ is a term used for an outlawed criminal (see p. 28); and since it is difficult to conceive of what a ‘wolf-headtree’ could otherwise be. However, although the object described in Riddle 55 ‘must resemble a gallows whether in looks or function’, it is ‘unlikely to be “the gallows”’ since, contrary to other clues given in the poem regarding the object’s identity, ‘a gallows does not proffer weapons, it is not normally associated with gold and silver, and it would not normally be thought of as “useful” in the sense that ordinary items are of use’; Niles, Enigmatic Poems, p. 65. While the author of these Leges ‘claimed to record […] the laws (laga) that had been in force under King Edward the Confessor (1042–66)’, the laws presented in this text ‘are not in any sense […] a record of all the English customs that had force under the Confessor’, but rather, they concern only ‘different aspects of the peace or, better, the types of legally established peace and security that the Church and king had power to create and administer’, and they are frequently drawn from elsewhere; Bruce R. O’Brien, ed. and trans., God’s Peace and King’s Peace: The Laws of Edward the Confessor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 3 and 36 respectively. The first section of the Leges in which the passage describing the wluesheued is found, for example, ‘is a collage of a continental text of the peace of God and regulations governing sanctuary from a Carolingian capitulary, pasted onto what appear to be original accounts of English customs, which, incidentally, differ little in thrust from the imposed foreign texts’; ibid, p. 36. The section describing the escaped peace-breaker as a wluesheued is not found in either of these sources, however, suggesting that this may be an ‘original account[] of [an] English custom[]’; ibid. Indeed, although the term wluesheued ‘is not found by itself in the Old English Corpus’, it does ‘exist[] as a compound in wulfheofodtreow’, and in any case, its absence from the corpus ‘does not rule out its currency in oral speech […] before the laws that record it’; Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 369. Laws of Edward the Confessor, ed. and trans. by O'Brien, pp. 162–5.

28

A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws Like the Leges Edwardi Confessoris’s wluesheued ‘wolf-head’, the wulfheort ‘wolf-hearted’ (line 116) King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel also disregards the law: No he æ fremede, / ac in oferhygde æghwæs lifde ‘He did not enforce the law, but lived in pride in every way’ (lines 106–7). In so doing, he awehte […] wæl-nið ‘awakened slaughter-enmity’ in Babylonia (line 46), the latter term curiously recalling the proclamation that walreaf is niðinges dæde ‘walreaf is the deed of the niðing’ in the Walreaf law-code.55 Indeed, Daniel predicts that God will exile Nebuchadnezzar as punishment for his wolfish crimes: Se ðec aceorfeð of cyningdome, and ðec wineleasne on wræc sendeð, and þonne onhweorfeð heortan þine, þæt þu ne gemyndgast æfter mandreame, ne gewittes wast butan wildeora þeaw, ac þu lifgende lange þrage heorta hlypum geond holt wunast. (lines 568–73) [He will cut you off from your kingdom and send you into exile, friendless, and then change your heart so that afterwards you do not remember human joys, nor will you be aware of any knowledge except the manner of wild beasts, but for a long time you will live in the leaps of the deer, dwelling within the woods.]

Nebuchadnezzar’s wolf-heartedness thus becomes manifested in his outlawry whereby, as with the wluesheued ‘wolf-head’, his human status is revoked. Just as Nebuchadnezzar is banished to the wilderness, real-life outlaws who absconded, such as the wluesheued ‘wolf-head’, ‘could have readily sought refuge in temporarily inhabited areas and certainly in the more “impenetrable areas”, which would have included elements of woodland’.56 Though Pluskowski notes that ‘this relationship’ between woods and outlaws ‘is rarely recorded in official records’,57 in the late seventh-century laws of Ine it is proclaimed that gif feorcund mon oððe fremde butan wege geond wudu gonge ⁊ ne hrieme ne horn blawe, for ðeof he bið to profianne ‘if a person who comes from afar or a stranger proceeds through the wood off the path, and does not call out nor blow a horn, he will be regarded as a thief’,58 implying that an unknown person found in the woods was considered a criminal a priori, unless they made clear ‘Walreaf’, in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. by Liebermann, p. 392. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 188. 57 Ibid. 58 ‘Laws of Ine’, in Laws, ed. and trans. by Attenborough, p. 42. 55 56

29

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts otherwise. In Ælfric’s Letter to Sigeweard, meanwhile, a sceaðena ealdor ‘leader of criminals’ is described as a wealdgenga ‘forest-goer’.59 That wooded areas were exploited for economic and pastoral activities is not antithetical to the association of such areas with outlaws. Although ‘woodland was arguably one of the most important resources across medieval Europe’, and in England ‘it was harvested for building material and fuel’ and used for domestic animal pasture and the hunting of wild animals, wooded areas were often ‘located some distance from the communities that used them’.60 For example, although the Weald – a 120-mile-long stretch of forest in south-eastern England61 – was ‘exploited for iron working, transhumance, pasture and wood collecting’, the settlements in this area were ‘small and far apart’, and ‘human activity was seasonally restricted, suggesting that the managed Weald must have been empty of significant human activity for much of the year’.62 It could therefore have ‘provided a suitable habitat for wild beasts’ as well, perhaps, as shelter for those forced out of their communities and running from the law.63 In any case, even if the conceptual relationship between outlaws and woodland was not based in reality, ‘at the very least […] there may have been an expectation for woods to be populated with hermits, outlaws, and other outlandish denizens’.64 Whether real or conceptual, this association of wooded areas with such figures may have perpetuated the conflation of outlawed criminals with wolves,65 since this species was both conceptually and literally associated with woodland. Maxims II, which records the ‘conventional or normative’ order of the world,66 states that wulf sceal on bearowe ‘the wolf must be in the wood’ (line 18), and indeed, in Old English poetry ‘one of the



59



60 61

64 65 62 63



66

Libellus de veteri testamento et novo, in ‘The Old English Heptateuch’ and Ælfric’s ‘Libellus de veteri testamento et novo’, ed. by Richard Marsden, EETS OS, 330 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008– ), i: Introduction and Text (2008), pp. 201–30 (lines 768–9). Pluskowski, Wolves, pp. 43 and 46. Della Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 13 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), p. 138. Pluskowski, Wolves, pp. 43 and 46. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid., p. 188. Nótári contends that the development of some of the wargus words to include ‘wolf’ in their semantic range ‘can be undoubtedly connected with the fact that’, according to the Lex Salica, ‘a malefactor who has failed to pay conpositio [monetary restitution] hides in the forest (per silvas vadit)’; ‘Robbing of a Grave’, p. 251. Nicholas Howe, ‘The Cultural Construction of Reading in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Old English Literature: Critical Essays, ed. by R. M. Liuzza (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 1–22 (p. 6).

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws most common lupine collocations’ is of ‘wood words with wolf words’.67 This literary relationship may have had ‘an observational foundation’,68 since although in terms of suitable habitat ‘the wolf is not restricted to woodland, […] in medieval northern Europe, the wolf responded to the distribution of permanent human activity by selecting sheltered and relatively inaccessible environments’, including forests.69 By dint of inhabiting the same landscape as the lupine earm anhaga ‘wretched loner’ (Maxims II, line 19), the outlaw who fled to the forest may have been deemed even more wolf-like than they had been previously.70 Likewise, the outlaw’s situation probably cemented his lupine identity, as his ‘need to find food for himself may perhaps have led to his preying upon settled areas, stealing livestock or foodstuffs in a way quite similar to the activities of wolves’.71 So too did people ‘endow[] [wolves] with malevolent intent by equating them with human thieves’, because they ‘slipped out of the forest and into pastures to kill and eat livestock’.72 Hence, a cycle was created wherein ‘wicked people who attack[ed] others’ were deemed to be ‘like wolves[,] and the essential wickedness of the wolf [was] more firmly established, and played back onto the wolf, by being imagined as similar to such people’.73 Yet the fact that the wluesheued ‘wolf-head’ is ‘defined as a wolf-man and not simply as a wolf […] is decisive’.74 Despite no longer belonging to humankind, such a man did not fully transform into an animal either. Instead, he occupied ‘a zone of indistinction and continuous transition between man and beast, nature and culture’, a space he shared with the werewolf, a being which ‘dwells paradoxically within both’ human and animal ‘while belonging to neither’.75 Such a figure is found in Maxims I, in which a Wineleas, wonsælig mon ‘Friendless, miserable man’ (line 146) is forced to leave human society and seek the company of wolves. Like the wluesheued ‘wolf-head’, this man appears to be an outlawed criminal, ‘friendless’ by his own doing rather than the workings of wyrd ‘fate’.76 One Harlan-Haughey, p. 26. See, for example, Elene (lines 27–8 and 112–13), The Battle of Brunanburh (line 65), and Judith (line 206). 68 Lacey, p. 119. 69 Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 11. See ibid., p. 46 for more on this. 70 Harlan-Haughey, p. 25. 71 Ibid. 72 Jones, p. 27. 73 Garry Marvin, Wolf (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), p. 45. 74 Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 105. 75 Ibid., pp. 109 and 105 respectively. 76 See Jennifer Neville, ‘Monsters and Criminals: Defining Humanity in Old English Poetry’, in Monsters and the Monstrous in Medieval Northwest Europe, ed. by K. E. Olsen and L. A. J. R. Houwen (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), pp. 103–22

67

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts of the terms by which he is described, wonsælig ‘miserable’, is ‘associated with legal disputes’ earlier in the poem:77 þing sceal gehegan frod wiþ frodne; biþ hyra ferð gelic, hi a sace semaþ, sibbe gelærað, þa ær wonsælge awegen habbað.

(lines 20–1)

[an assembly must be held, wise ones with wise ones, as their minds are alike; they settle legal disputes and induce peace, after the wretched had previously taken it away.]

Similarly, the verb used to describe how the man's new lupine companions destroy him, slitan ‘to tear [apart]’ (line 147), echoes ‘the second element of the technical term lahslit (the payment due for breach of the law)’.78 As with other outlaws, this man is cut off from ‘the reciprocal relationships that create and safeguard society [and] that render a person a human being’,79 the only ‘community’ available to him that of wolves, whom he takes as his geferana ‘friends’ (line 146). Yet this felafæcne deor ‘very deceitful animal’ (line 147) does not accept him as one of its own, instead treating him as prey: Ful oft hine se gefera sliteð; gryre sceal for greggum, græf deadum men; hungre heofeð, nales þæt heafe bewindeð, ne huru wæl wepeð wulf se græga, morþorcwealm mæcga, ac hit a mare wille. (lines 147–51) [Very often, that friend tears him apart; cowards must be with dread, dead men with a grave, and the grey wolf wails for hunger; he is not enwrapped in lamentation, and he certainly does not mourn the slain or the slaughter of men, but he always wants more.]



77



78 79

(pp. 121–2). When another ‘friendless’ man is described later in the poem, the term wineleas ‘friendless’ is alliterated with wyrd ‘fate’ (earm biþ se þe sceal ana lifgan, / wineleas wunian hafaþ him wyrd geteod ‘he who must spend his life alone, live friendless, is wretched; fate decreed that he have this’, lines 172–3), exposing its conspicuous absence in the earlier passage, in which wineleas ‘friendless’ is instead alliterated with wonsælig ‘miserable’ and wulfas ‘wolves’ (line 146). Brian O’Camb, ‘Isidorean Wolf Lore and the felafæcne deor of Maxims I.C: Some Rhetorical and Legal Contexts for Recognising Another Old English wulf in Sheep’s Clothing’, ES, 97 (2016), 687–708 (p. 701). Ibid., p. 705. Neville, ‘Monsters’, p. 121.

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws Rejected by humankind and his new wolfen companions alike, refused the company of each group for being too much like the other, this friendless man’s identity exists in a state of flux between wolf and human.80 Not only this, but having been consumed by the wolfish companions who rend his corpse like the lupine Beast of Battle, this man also becomes an outlaw from God. Just as Ælfric’s lupine thieves are punished by humankind and God alike, the dismemberment of this friendless man’s corpse assures that he will have no edlean æt þam ælmihtigan Gode81 ‘reward at all from the Almighty God’ since, with no body with which to reunite in order to plead its case for salvation on Judgement Day,82 his soul will be damned, and he will become an eternal outlaw from God and the heavenly kingdom. In early medieval England, then, wolves were found not only in the form of dangerous wild animals, but also hiding in human form within the community, wolves in sheep’s clothing. Just as real wolves might ‘attack from the forest’, so too could ‘wolfishness […] infect human souls and bodies’,83 with lupine criminals predating upon the community from within its walls. Yet, unlike real wolves, these wolfish humans could not be dealt with by the deployment of strategically-placed wolf-pits, nor could they be deterred by the presence of a watchful shepherd. Instead, the person who committed a lupine crime – such as thievery or graverobbing – was forced to renounce their social, legal and human statuses,84 and was recast as a wolf in accordance with their bestial behaviour.85 Banished from humankind in both literal and abstract terms, the wolfish outlaw was thus subject to ‘depersonalisation, marginalisation and confinement to a defined liminal space: wilderness, shared conceptually and physically with wolves’.86 Nonetheless, they did not become fully lupine either. Despite losing their membership of humanity, the outlaw remained human in form, the wolves whose company he was forced to take thus not recognising him as one of their own. A stranger to both wolfkind and humankind alike and belonging to both and yet neither species, this figure existed in a liminal state which, as is made clear in Maxims I, he could not survive.

Neville notes that the wulfas ‘wolves’ here could be metaphorical, with ‘the friendless man […] tak[ing] criminals and outlaws, men no better than beasts or evil spirits, as companions’; Natural World, p. 85 n.130. 81 Passio Albani, in Ælfric’s ‘Lives of Saints’, ed. and trans. by Skeat, p. 424. 82 See Judgement Day, lines 100–3. 83 Spears, p. 99. 84 Neville, Natural World, p. 85 n.130. 85 Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 352. 86 Pluskowski, Wolves, pp. 185–6.

80

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Old Norse vargr Numerous characters who occupy ‘a zone of indistinction and continuous transition between man and beast’ are found in the Old Norse corpus.87 Such figures were often described by the term vargr, the cognate of wargus which did possess a semantic range including both ‘criminal’ or ‘outlaw’, and ‘wolf’.88 The context in which the term appears often indicates which meaning was intended. In some instances the meanings ‘outlaw’ or ‘criminal’ are more self-evident, such as in the appearance of the compound vargǫld in the Vǫluspá.89 In others, it makes more sense to interpret the term as ‘wolf’. For example, a woman is said to ride a vargr in the c. tenth-century

87 88



89

Agamben, p. 109. It is unclear whether ‘wolf’ or ‘outlaw’ was the original meaning of vargr, and ‘it is not difficult to see how a word which originally meant “criminal, thief, outlaw” could be applied to a wolf’, or vice versa; Gabriel Turville-Petre, ‘Outlawry’, in Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. Júlí 1977, ed. by Einar G. Pétursson and Jónas Kristjánsson (Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1977), pp. 769–78 (p. 778). Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson ‘leave no doubt as to the direction of the semantic development’ (Fred C. Robinson, ‘Germanic *uargaz (OE wearh) and the Finnish Evidence’, in Inside Old English: Essays in Honour of Bruce Mitchell, ed. by John Walmsley (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 242–7 (p. 243)), by defining the term first as ‘a wolf’ and secondarily as ‘a law phrase, metaph. an outlaw, who is to be hunted down as a wolf, esp. used of one who commits a crime in a holy place, and is thereon declared accursed’ (An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 2nd edn, with a supplement by William A. Craigie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), s.v. vargr, p. 680), while Carole Hough contends that ‘it seems likely that the primary meaning was “wolf”, since a development from “wolf” to “criminal” is more logical than a development from “criminal” to “wolf”’; ‘OE wearg in Wanborough and Wreighton’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 27 (1994–5), 14–20 (p. 17). On the other hand, Turville-Petre contends that semantic development extended in the opposite direction, that ‘originally the Germanic word *uargaz meant a “criminal thief, outlaw”, and came later to be applied to the wolf, the savage beast fit to be treated as a criminal outlaw’ (‘Outlawry’, p. 778), a point agreed upon by Robinson, who suggests that this secondary meaning arose among ‘Scandinavian speakers’ as ‘a euphemistic denomination of a feared animal that one did not want to summon by pronouncing its actual name’; ‘*uargaz’, p. 246. Robinson, ‘*uargaz’, p. 246; see Vǫluspá, in Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern, ed. by Gustav Neckel, 5th edn, rev. by Hans Kuhn (Heidelberg: Winter, 1983), pp. 1–16 (st. 45). Though Carolyne Larrington translates this term as ‘wolf-age’ (The Seeress’s Prophecy, in The Poetic Edda, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 3–12 (st. 44)), Robinson argues that ‘the age being described is one of criminality’; ‘*uargaz’, p. 246. All further references to the Poetic Edda in the original Norse and in translation are from Neckel and Larrington respectively, and are given in parentheses in the text.

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws Eddic poem Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar (st. 35), which must surely refer to a wolf, not least because it would make little sense for an outlaw to be a steed, but also since wolves were sometimes depicted as the mounts of female trolls and giantesses in Old Norse poetry.90 Likewise, when the warrior Helgi is described as varga vinr ‘a friend to wolves’ by two ravens in the c. eleventh- or twelfth-century Eddic poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana I (st. 6), logic dictates that varga here refers to wolves, specifically the lupine Beasts of Battle, who feed upon the corpses of the warriors that Helgi cuts down. In the c. eleventh-century Eddic poem Guðrúnarkviða II, meanwhile, Guðrún ‘describes how she made her way to the woods to retrieve all that was left of Sigurðr’s [her husband’s] body after the wolves had feasted on it’:91 Hvarf ec ein þaðan, annspilli frá, / á við, lesa varga leifar ‘Away I went from the conversation, / to the wood, to gather the wolves’ leavings’ (st. 11). The appearance of an analogous phrase in the Icelandic Rune Poem, úlfs leifar ‘leavings of the wolf’,92 might suggest that varga in the former passage refers to the animals. However, a corpse picked over by an outlawed graverobber might also be described as his ‘leavings’, perhaps suggesting a similar conceptual blurring of the corpse-plundering wolf and human as in the Old English tradition.93 This also may be evidenced in a passage from the c. twelfth-century Eddic poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, in which the wife of the late Helgi, Sigrún, tells his murderer that: Þá væri þér hefnt Helga dauða, ef þú værir vargr á viðom úti, auðs andvani oc allz gamans, hefðir eigi mat, nema á hræom spryngir.

(st. 33)

[Helgi’s death would be avenged on you, if you were a wolf out in the forest deprived of wealth and all well-being and of food, except when you glutted yourself on corpses.]

While the murderer’s woodland haunt and his ‘depriv[ation] of wealth and all well-being’ suggest that he has been cast out from human society, the reference to corpse-consumption implies an overlap between the



90



91



92



93

Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, ‘The Werewolf in Medieval Icelandic Literature’, JEGP, 106 (2007), 277–303 (p. 299). Margaret Clunies Ross, ‘The Anglo-Saxon and Norse Rune Poems: A Comparative Study’, ASE, 19 (1990), 23–39 (p. 38). Ibid., citing ‘The Icelandic Rune Poem’, in The Old English ‘Rune Poem’: A Critical Edition, ed. and trans. by Maureen Halsall, McMaster Old English Studies and Texts, 2 (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1981), pp. 183–6 (line 35). See pp. 25–6 above.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts meanings of vargr as ‘outlaw’ and ‘wolf’, and between the exploitation of corpses by members of both the human and lupine species.94 In the Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, furthermore, the character Sinfjǫtli is described as being varglióðom vanr / á viðom úti ‘used to wolves’ howling, out in the woods’ (st. 41). While the vargr of varghljóðum here likely refers to wolves, the fact that Sinfjǫtli lives in the woods among such creatures, and that he is hvarleiðr ‘hated everywhere’ (st. 36), also imply that he is an outcast from society. He has become wolf-like himself as a result, having etnar úlfa krásir ‘eaten wolves’ corpse-leavings’, sár sogin með svǫlum munni ‘sucked wounds with a cold snout’, and í hreysi hvarleiðr skriðit ‘slunk into a stone-tip’ (st. 36). This hreysi ‘stone-tip’ into which Sinfjǫtli has ‘slunk’ could refer to a ‘grave-cairn’,95 suggesting that the úlfa krásir ‘wolves’ corpse-leavings’ are human bodies buried within, Sinfjǫtli’s graverobbing not merely echoing the behaviour of the wolf, as does the behaviour of other corpse-plunderers, but imitating it exactly. Just as Sinfjǫtli’s wolfishness and outlawry are related here, this character is likewise depicted as both an outlaw and a wolf in the thirteenth-century Vǫlsunga saga, in which Sinfjǫtli and his father, Sigmund, ‘live as outlaws in the forest and are turned into wolves by magic skins’.96 Father and son speak with vargr and ulf ‘wolf’ voices (rǫddu) post-transformation,97 the term vargrǫddu ‘varg-voices’ recalling the varghljóðum ‘wolves’ howling’ heard by Sinfjǫtli in the Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, although the dual wolf-outlaw identities of Sinfjǫtli and Sigmund make it – perhaps deliberately – impossible to ascertain the meaning of vargr here. Indeed, while the concurrence of ulfsrǫddu and vargrǫddu in this passage suggests that they may be considered synonyms (and, therefore, that vargr is to be taken as ‘wolf’), the simplex vargr is used earlier in the Vǫlsunga saga to describe Sigi (Sinfjǫtli and Sigmund’s forefather), who is outlawed for committing murder.98 The ambiguous meaning of vargr in the later passage of the saga therefore reflects the conflation between outlawed criminals and wolves which is made explicit by – and indeed, manifested in – the lycanthropy of Sinfjǫtli and Sigmund.99

Bernt Øyvind Thorvaldsen notes that ‘this stanza might reflect an interesting association between the vargr metaphor and the wolf as a beast of battle’; ‘Níðingr and the Wolf’, p. 187 n.10. 95 Helgakvida Hundingsbana in fyrri, in The Elder Edda: A Book of Viking Lore, trans. by Andy Orchard (London: Penguin, 2011), pp. 117–25 (p. 122). 96 Jones, p. 27. 97 See Vǫlsunga saga: The Saga of the Volsungs, ed. and trans. by R. G. Finch (London: Nelson, 1965), pp. 11v–11r. 98 See Vǫlsunga saga, ed. and trans. by Finch, pp. 1v–1r. 99 Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir argues that the above-quoted passages from the Helgakviða Hundingsbana I ‘indicate[] […] that the werewolf motif as used in 94

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws A passage from the Tryggðamál, a peace treaty formula recorded in the Icelandic Grágás law-code which ‘ambiguates the criminal and the animal’, suggests that this conceptual blurring of the wolf and outlaw in the semantic range of vargr was not only a literary trope;100 in this text, it is declared that anyone er gengr a gørvar sáttir eða vegr áveittar trygðir […] scal hann sva viða vargr rækr oc rekin sem menn viðazt varga reka, cristnir men kirkior søkia, heiðnir menn hof blóta ‘who tramples on treaties made or smites at sureties given […] shall be an outcast despised and driven off as far and wide as ever men drive outcasts off, Christians come to church, heathens hallow temples’.101 Here, it is (perhaps deliberately) unclear whether ‘the abhorrent varg [is] to be expelled (rekinn) the way Christian men expel other criminals, or the way all men drive out wolves’;102 this animal was frequently hunted and killed in medieval Scandinavia,103 and both wolf and outlaw were ‘considered threats to life and community’ to be ‘driven away or killed to prevent harm’.104 Indeed, elsewhere in the Grágás the child of an outlaw is termed a vargdropi,105 a figure whose lupine identity is made explicit in the Sigrdrífumál when, in reference to him, it is said that úlfr er í ungom syni ‘the wolf is in the young son’ (st. 35). The designation of the transgressor in the Tryggðamál passage as a vargr may therefore suggest that ‘the breaking of trygð [peace] […] resulted in the non-human status’ of

Völsunga saga is old, as does the fact that the motif appears to be quite deeply rooted in the saga structure’; ‘Werewolf’, p. 287. 100 Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 354. 101 Grágás: Islændernes lovbog i fristatens tid udgivet efter det kongelige Bibliotheks Haandskrift, ed. by Vilhjálmur Finsen, 4 vols (Copenhagen: Berlings, 1852–70), i: Text I, 206, and Laws of Early Iceland: ‘Grágás’, the Codex Regius of Grágás, with Material from Other Manuscripts, trans. by Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote and Richard Perkins, University of Manitoba Icelandic Studies, 3 and 5, 2 vols (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1980–2000), i (1980), pp. 184–5. While some parts of the Grágás (perhaps including the Tryggðamál) were first recorded in writing in the early twelfth century, the beginning of the passage in question survives in the tenth-century Norwegian legal tract known as the Gulathing. Although only a short passage of the Tryggðamál is found in the surviving manuscript of this text, ‘it seems reasonable to suppose that the rest of Tryggðamál followed and has been lost with the last pages of the manuscript’; Elizabeth Jackson, Old Icelandic Truce Formulas (‘Tryggðamál’) (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, 2016), p. 6. From Norway, it appears that ‘the Gulaþing version of Tryggðamál, […] [was] taken to Iceland in the 920s’; ibid. 102 Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 354. 103 See Pluskowski, Wolves, pp. 98–9. 104 Bernt Øyvind Thorvaldsen, p. 185. 105 See Grágás, ed. by Finsen, i, 224, and Grágás, trans. by Dennis, Foote and Perkins, ii (2000), p. 7.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts this figure,106 both by dint of his bestial crimes and the resultant outlawry, which rendered him legally sub-human and thus allowed others to hunt him like an animal. Vargr, then, could clearly mean both ‘wolf’ and ‘outlaw’, and while it is unclear which – if either – was the primary meaning, it does not appear that the usage of vargr for ‘wolf’ was simply borrowed as ‘a euphemistic denomination of a feared animal that one did not want to summon by pronouncing its actual name’,107 not least because the Norse personal name Ulfr was ‘extremely common’.108 Rather, the evidence examined above, and especially those instances in which the term’s meaning is ambiguous, appear to suggest that in early medieval Scandinavia, as in England, there existed an association between wolves and outlaws which went beyond euphemistic borrowing, hinging instead upon a perceived conceptual likeness or conflation between the two.

Old English wearg After the first Danish raid of England in the late eighth century, followed by continuous fighting and treaty-making over the following hundred years, the Danes enacted ‘large-scale and profound’ settlement in the area of England which became known as the Danelaw, their population supplemented by ‘continuing migration from Scandinavia’.109 That said, ‘the native Anglo-Saxon population in the areas of Scandinavian settlement was by no means driven out or otherwise suppressed’ and, as such, ‘in the tenth and eleventh centuries Anglo-Saxon England is more properly to be regarded as Anglo-Scandinavian England, with the two peoples, similar but distinctive, in close and persistent contact’.110 Though the form which initial communications between these groups took is uncertain, it is often suggested that since ‘Old English and Old Norse were typologically very close to one another, […] there must have existed significant mutual intelligibility between the Anglo-Saxons and

Anne Irene Riisøy, ‘Outlawry: From Western Norway to England’, in New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia, ed. by Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson, Acta Scandinavica, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 101–29 (p. 108). 107 Robinson, ‘*uargaz’, p. 246. See also Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 336. 108 Peter Orton, ‘An Approach to Wulf and Eadwacer’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 85 (1985), 223–58 (p. 225). 109 Matthew Townend, Language and History in Viking Age England: Linguistic Relations between Speakers of Old Norse and Old English, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), p. 2. 110 Ibid.

106

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws the Scandinavian newcomers’.111 Indeed, over time the Old Norse language began to leave its mark upon both the Old English language and the landscape of early medieval England; there is ‘extensive evidence of loanwords into English’, as well as a ‘huge number of place- and field-names containing Scandinavian vocabulary and, very occasionally, identifiably Scandinavian grammatical structures’.112 The language of outlawry in particular was influenced by Scandinavian settlers; Old English lagu ‘law’, utlah ‘outlawed’ or ‘outlaw’, utlagu ‘outlawry’, and utlaga ‘outlaw’ were all borrowed from Old Norse and, having ‘entered the written language in c. 970 […] rapidly rose to a peak during the 990s and early eleventh century, after which [they] became the dominating vocabulary for outlawry’.113 Old English literature was also not unaffected by Scandinavian influence, with at least ‘some Anglo-Saxon audiences […] not immune to Norse taste’.114 Roberta Frank demonstrates that excerpts from Exodus and Beowulf ‘are extraordinarily responsive to a “skaldic” reading’,115 while Judith Jesch has theorised that ‘the practice of court poetry was exported by the Vikings to their colonies in Britain and Ireland, and may, despite the language barrier, even have been practised at the court of kings whose native tongue was English’.116 Some skaldic poems, Jesch also argues, were written specifically for performance in Anglo-Scandinavian England,117 and Frank suggests that during Cnut the Great’s reign (1016–35), ‘London was probably the center in the North for the production and distribution



Sara M. Pons-Sanz, ‘Identifying and Dating Norse-Derived Terms in Medieval English: Approaches and Methods’, in Early Germanic Languages in Contact, ed. by John Ole Askedal and Hans Frede Nielsen, North-Western European Language Evolution Supplement Series, 27 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2015), pp. 203–21 (p. 204). 112 David N. Parsons, ‘How Long Did the Scandinavian Language Survive in England? Again’, in Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress, Nottingham and York, 21st–30th August 1997, ed. by James Graham-Campbell et al. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2001), pp. 299–312 (p. 299). 113 Elisabeth van Houts, ‘The Vocabulary of Exile and Outlawry in the North Sea Area around the First Millennium’, in Exile in the Middle Ages: Selected Proceedings from the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 8–11 July 2002, ed. by Laura Napran and Elisabeth van Houts, International Medieval Research, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 13–28 (p. 15). 114 Roberta Frank, ‘Did Anglo-Saxon Audiences Have a Skaldic Tooth?’, Scandinavian Studies, 59 (1987), 338–55 (p. 339). 115 Ibid. 116 Judith Jesch, ‘Skaldic Verse in Scandinavian England’, in Vikings and the Danelaw, ed. by Graham-Campbell, Hall, Jesch and Parsons, pp. 313–25 (p. 314). 117 See ibid., pp. 315–17. 111

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts of skaldic poetry’.118 While such theories are by nature speculative and analogic studies are likely to remain inconclusive, ‘the evidence amassed by art historians [which] points to an integration of Scandinavian motifs with English traditions, a reciprocity and blending’ suggests that, ‘if Old English poetry alone of the arts did not “catch” Scandinavian taste, its immunity needs explaining’.119 Rather, ‘a borrowing or sharing of literary ideas would almost certainly have taken place’ between the native peoples and the Scandinavian settlers.120 Given the influence of Old Norse terminology and literature upon Old English language and poetry, it is possible that the conception of the outlaw as wolf-like was shared between these two cultures. It is also conceivable that the ambiguity of vargr could have been borrowed into the semantic range of wearg (if the latter term did not already possess a lupine connotation prior to the advent of the Danelaw) as a result of sustained contact between Old Norse and Old English speakers. Old English terms did sometimes ‘change under the influence of Germanic cognates virtually identical in form, but by no means identical in their semantic range’; Old English wicing, for example, experienced a semantic shift ‘within the late Anglo-Saxon period under the influence of Old Norse víkingr’.121 Indeed, the dual meaning of this Old Norse cognate has been used to support the suggestion that wearg also possessed a secondary lupine meaning or a wolfish connotation, a theory first advanced by Jacob Grimm when, observing that ‘the outlaw, like the wolf, lived in the forest and might be killed with impunity by anyone’,122 he ‘brought the semantic application of vargr to the wolf together with the Old English cognate wearg’.123 While this interpretation has been accepted – to varying

118



119 120



121



122



123

Roberta Frank, ‘Skaldic Poetry’, in Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, ed. by Carol J. Clover and John Lindow, Islandica, 45 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 157–96 (p. 179). Frank, ‘Skaldic Tooth’, p. 352. Hugo Edward Britt, ‘The Beasts of Battle: Associative Connections of the Wolf, Raven and Eagle in Old English Poetry’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Melbourne, 2014), p. 152. Christine E. Fell, ‘Runes and Semantics’, in Old English Runes and Their Continental Background, ed. by Alfred Bammesberger (Heidelberg: Winter, 1991), pp. 195–229 (p. 205). For more on this term, see Fell’s article ‘Old English wicing: A Question of Semantics’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 72 (1986), 295–316. Mary R. Gerstein, ‘Germanic Warg: The Outlaw as Werwolf’, in Myth in Indo-European Antiquity, ed. by Gerald James Larson, C. Scott Littleton, and Jaan Puhvel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 131–56 (p. 132), citing Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, 2nd edn (Göttingen: Buchhandlung, 1854), p. 733. E. G. Stanley, ‘Wolf, My Wolf!’, in Old English and New: Studies in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy, ed. by Joan H. Hall, Nick Doane

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws degrees – by some,124 it has not been met with universal agreement; Fred C. Robinson, for example, contends that ‘scholars in the past’ have ‘laboured under the misapprehension that the basic meaning of wearh, vargr, etc. was “wolf”’,125 while E. G. Stanley questions the lupine meaning of both wearg and its cognates, suggesting that ‘the direction of semantic change is from […] “felon, criminal outlaw” to “wolf” in Icelandic only’.126 Yet even the primary meaning of the noun wearg is not easily pinned down, with both ‘outlaw’ and ‘criminal’ often given. In BT the two definitions given are ‘villain, felon, scoundrel, criminal’ or ‘monster, malignant being, evil spirit’,127 meanings broadly agreed upon by Felix Liebermann, who ‘explains wearg as “criminal”, not equivalent with “wolf” or “outlaw”’;128 Vladimir Orel, who lists only ‘villain, felon, criminal’;129 Stanley, who gives ‘“criminal” or “accursed one”’;130 and Neville, who describes the wearg as ‘a criminal – or, perhaps, a monster’.131 On the other hand, J. R. Clark Hall gives ‘accursed one, outlaw, felon, criminal’ along with a meaning of ‘wolf’;132 M. S. Griffith ‘criminal’ and ‘outlaw’;133 R. D. Fulk ‘outlaw, accursed person’;134 Friedrich Klaeber ‘outlaw’ and ‘one who is



124

127 128 125 126

131 132 129 130



133 134

and Dick Ringler (New York, NY: Garland, 1992), pp. 46–62 (p. 47). Harlan-Haughey, for example, suggests that ‘the connection between outlaws and wolves was […] an old equation’, citing both vargr and wearg as terms which ‘lexically equate the outlawed human specifically with wolves’ (English Outlaw, p. 25), while Neville accepts that wearg meant both ‘wolf’ and ‘outlaw’, and suggests that although this ‘double meaning apparently prevailed only very late in the Anglo-Saxon period’, the linguistic duality of this term may have succeeded a conceptual overlap, as ‘in Old English poetry (and perhaps also in Old English law) the exile was not so clean-cut; a thief or outlaw worthy of being “shot on sight” might not have seemed so different from a wolf’; ‘Monsters’, pp. 120–1. Similarly, while Higley notes that ‘in recorded Old English, wearg and wulf never converged in meaning’ (‘Werewolf’, p. 336), she finds ample evidence to suggest that the wolf and outlaw were conflated nonetheless. Robinson, ‘*uargaz’, 246. Stanley, ‘Wolf’, p. 50. BT s.v. wearg(-h), p. 1177. Stanley, p. 54 n.4, citing F. Liebermann, ‘Die Friedlosigkeit bei den Angelsachsen’, in Festschrift Heinrich Brunner zum siebzigsten Geburtstag dargebracht von Schülern und Verehrern (Weimar: Böhlaus, 1910), pp. 17–37 (p. 20). A Handbook of Germanic Etymology (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p. 448. ‘Wolf’, p. 47. ‘Monsters’, p. 120. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th edn, with a supplement by Herbert D. Meritt (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1960), s.v. wearg, p. 399. ‘Convention’, p. 188. ‘Old English werg-, wyrg- “accursed”’, Historische Sprachforschung, 117 (2004), 315–22 (p. 315).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts damned’;135 and Robinson ‘criminal, outlaw, thief’.136 Sara M. Pons-Sanz, meanwhile, groups the term with other Old English words meaning ‘law-breaker’,137 while in the DOE (which does not yet extend to the letter ‘w’), the compound heorowearh is defined as ‘savage felon / outlaw, fierce outcast’.138 The confusion may be attributable both to the fact that wargus meant ‘outlaw’ and vargr both ‘outlaw’ and ‘criminal’, and because the adjectival form of wearg, ‘evil, vile, malignant, accursed’,139 was frequently used to describe outcasts from human society and/or from God, often as a consequence of crimes they had committed. This conflation of the nominal and adjectival meanings of wearg is apparent in the definition of the compound noun weargtreow, a place-name found in two charters,140 given in BT: ‘the accursed tree, a gallows, gibbet, cross’.141 Here, wearg is treated as an adjective when in fact ‘the gallows itself is neither a tree nor accursed’, but ‘a wooden structure (trēow) that is used to hang criminals (weargas)’.142 A similar word, weargrod, is found in eight place-names as well as in seven glosses,143 where it defines furca and furcimen The Christian Elements in ‘Beowulf’, trans. by Paul Battles, Old English Newsletter Subsidia, 24 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996), p. 20. 136 ‘*uargaz’, p. 244. 137 Lexical Effects, p. 162. 138 DOE s.v. heoru-wearg [accessed 15 May 2018]. 139 BT s.v. wearg, p. 1177. Numerous examples of the adjective are listed in BT, grouped under the categories ‘of human beings’, ‘of evil spirits’, and ‘of things’; ibid. 140 See Andrew Reynolds, Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 279 (nos 102 and 107). However, one of these charters contains ‘post-Domesday particulars [which] have been inserted into what may have been a genuine grant of a 5-hide estate’, while the boundary survey of the other is spurious and may be a forgery (Simon Keynes et al., eds, The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters [accessed 3 August 2018], S 804 and S 1174 respectively), hence explaining why Ursula Dronke notes that ‘OE *weargtreo is not recorded’; The Poetic Edda, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–2011), i: Heroic Poems (1969), p. 232 n.17/5. Nonetheless, although the documents in which these terms are found may be spurious, this does not necessarily mean that the place-names themselves are not legitimate, especially given the existence of the Old Norse and Old Saxon cognates vargtré and waragtreo, which increases the likelihood that the term weargtreow could have been part of the Old English lexicon. 141 BT s.v. wearg-treōw, p. 1177. 142 Niles, Enigmatic Poems, p. 61 n.2. 143 See Reynolds, pp. 278–9 for a full list of the place-names. Wearg is most commonly paired with rod ‘rod’ or ‘cross’ in these toponyms (nos 96; 98; 99; 100; 102; and 105), though it also appears in compounds alongside dune ‘hill’ (nos 97 and 108), beorg ‘hill’ or ‘barrow’ (no. 103), ford ‘ford’ (no. 104), and burna

135

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws (‘gallows’), eculeus (‘rack (instrument of torture)’ or ‘gibbet’), and catasta (‘platform, scaffold’, ‘instrument of torture’, or ‘place or instrument of confinement’).144 Similarly, the simplex wearg is defined with furcifer (‘one who bears a “fork” […] a means of punishment’, or ‘rascal, villain’) in two glossaries,145 and describes a hanged person in Maxims II (lines 56–8), The Dream of the Rood (lines 30–1), The Fortunes of Men (lines 33–42), and Ælfric’s Passio sancti Eadmundi.146 The same Latin terms which are defined



144



145



146

‘stream’ (nos 101 and 106); ibid., pp. 225–6. When paired with the latter, Hough argues that wearg is more likely to mean ‘wolf’ than ‘criminal’, not only because ‘there is very little evidence for drowning as a means of execution in Anglo-Saxon England’ (OE wearg’, p. 14), but also since the names of animals are commonly paired with burna ‘stream’ in other compound placenames, and wulf is found ‘in combination with [other] words for water […] in charter-bounds’; ibid., pp. 16–18, and see also Aybes and Yalden’s list of lupine place-names in ‘Place-Name Evidence’, pp. 206–10. These compounds could therefore ‘preserve an early sense of OE wearg’ as ‘wolf’, since burna ‘stream’ ‘has been identified as one of the earliest place-name-forming elements used by the Anglo-Saxon settlers in England’; Hough, ‘OE wearg’, p. 17. That said, it should be noted that þeof ‘thief’ is also featured in several names for waterways, and though Hough demonstrates that these wearg place-names are unlikely to refer to locations where execution by drowning took place, Reynolds suggests that ‘the term largely refers to places associated with robbery’ (Deviant Burial Customs, pp. 224–5), which could potentially also be true of the water-related wearg place-names. DMLBS s.v. furca, furcimen, eculeus, and catasta [accessed 11 November 2017]. See the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, in The Oldest English Texts, ed. by Henry Sweet, EETS OS, 83 (London: Trübner, 1885), pp. 35–110 (p. 62, line 409); The Harley Latin-Old English Glossary, Edited from British Museum MS Harley 3376, ed. by Robert T. Oliphant, Janua Linguarum Series Practica, 20 (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), p. 206 (line 976); An Eighth-Century Latin-Anglo-Saxon Glossary Preserved in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (MS. No. 144), ed. by J. H. Hessels (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1890), p. 58 (line 371); ‘The Cleopatra Glossaries: An Edition with Commentary on the Glosses and Their Sources’, ed. by Philip Guthrie Rusche (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1996), pp. 235 (line 676), 291 (line 267), and 457 (line 901); and the Supplement to Ælfric’s Vocabulary, in A Volume of Vocabularies, Illustrating the Condition and Manners of Our Forefathers, ed. by Thomas Wright ([n.p.]: privately printed, 1857), pp. 49–61 (p. 55). DMLBS s.v. furcifer [accessed 31 October 2019]. See ‘The Cleopatra Glossaries’, ed. by Rusche, p. 295 (line 337), and the Harley Latin-Old English Glossary, ed. by Oliphant, p. 206 (line 977). See p. 138 below for more on this latter. It is possible that the wearg is often found swinging from the gallows because the Proto-Germanic root of this term, *wargaz, may be derived from the Indo-European *Hwórĝhos ‘strangled one, gallowsbird, rascal’; Jaan Puhvel, Epilecta Indoeuropaea: Opuscula selecta annis 1978–2001 excusa imprimis ad res Anatolicas attinentia (Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck, 2002), p. 105. Indeed, the related Indo-European term *Hwerĝh ‘constrict, throttle, strangle’ may also

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts by weargrod and wearg in the Old English glosses, furcifer ‘villain’ and the phrase furca dignus ‘gallows-worthy’, are defined in the eleventh-century Boulogne Prudentius glosses with the Old English feondulf ‘villain, criminal’,147 a compound which appears to comprise the terms feond ‘hostile’ and wulf.148 In the context of the broader association of wolves with criminals found in the Old English literary corpus, as well as the description of the gallows as a wulfheafedtreo ‘wolf-head-tree’ in Riddle 55 (line 12), it seems that it was not mere coincidence that led furcifer and furca dignus to be defined with weargrod, wearg, and feondulf. Perhaps the meaning of wearg as ‘criminal’ lent the term a wolfish subtext, since such figures were commonly associated with this animal. That both ‘criminal’ and ‘outlaw’ are frequently given as definitions of wearg in nominal form is not simply due to confusion between the nominal and adjectival meanings of the word. Rather, this bespeaks a broader issue relating to a significant overlap between the states of criminality and outlawry. Outlawry could be the punishment for a crime, while outlaws,



147 148

be the root of Old English wyrgan (‘strangle, throttle’; BT s.v wyrgan, p. 1288) and wurgil ‘rope’; Puhvel, p. 85. While ‘to worry (as an animal does)’ is listed as another meaning of wyrgan in BT (p. 1288), and it is tempting to take this as evidence of a wolfish association of the term, Stanley notes that its usage in this manner ‘is not recorded before the fourteenth century’ (‘Wolf’, p. 50), though it does gloss st[r]angulat (‘to strangle or throttle (esp. to death), (also) to choke, smother, suffocate […] (of animal, w. teeth or jaws)’; DMLBS s.v. catasta [accessed 11 November 2017]), in the Corpus Glossary, p. 111 (line 558). DOE s.v. fēond-ulf [accessed 15 May 2018]. The Old English Prudentius Glosses at Boulogne-sur-Mer, ed. by Herbert Dean Meritt, Stanford Studies in Language and Literature, 16 (New York, NY: AMS Press, 1967), p. 63 (line 617). Elsewhere, Meritt contends that the term should be read as ‘an adjective with suffix ul’, feondule, based on the fact that these glosses sometimes ‘use secret script’ to substitute letters, with f ‘at times […] the only secret letter in the word’ (as, for example, when betwyx is rendered as bftwx), so that the final e of feondule could have been substituted in the same manner. Supporting this possibility is the fact that elsewhere in the glosses the Latin noun legifer ‘law-giver’ (DMBLS s.v. legifer [accessed 9 December 2021]) is defined with the Old English adjective ælagol ‘legislative’ (DOE s.v. ǣ-lagol [accessed 9 December 2021]) suggesting that in the same way, the noun furcifer could also ‘have called forth an adjective feondule’; ‘Twenty Hard Old English Words’, JEGP, 49 (1950), 231–41 (p. 233). In his edition of the glosses, however, Meritt does concede that ‘the hand that in general characterizes the glosses in secret script is not the hand that wrote feondulf’ (Prudentius Glosses, p. 63), and one wonders whether it is necessary to create two conditions (the substitution of e for f, and the transformation of the -ifer Latin noun into the -ul or -ol Old English adjective) to enable the term to be read as feondule when the manuscript’s feondulf presents no problems, with feond ‘enemy, foe, adversary’; ‘someone or something malevolent or hostile’; or ‘devil, demon’ (DOE s.v. fēond [accessed 9 December 2021] certainly a fitting pairing with wulf.

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws since they were ‘deprived of other means of subsistence’, might be able to ‘earn their living in a criminal way only’.149 A criminal might not only be outlawed in literal terms, moreover, but they may also be considered sub-human both for their crimes and because they were forced to flee from a society from which they no longer enjoyed acceptance, thus conceptually ‘outcast’ from the status of ‘human’. This may be the case with the wearg; in Maxims II, for example, this figure is said to have committed crimes specifically against manna cynne ‘mankind’ (line 58), separating this criminal from his victims and implying that they do not belong to this group. Indeed, this concurs with the fact that in adjectival form, wearg (‘evil, vile, malignant, accursed’)150 generally describes ‘a miserable one in general, a wretch to be shunned and execrated’.151 Similarly, the past participle of a related verb, awyrgan ‘to curse, damn, consign to perdition’,152 could be employed as an adjective meaning ‘accursed; wicked, evil, malicious’.153 The figures to whom these terms were applied were often ‘accursed’ as a consequence of crimes committed by them against humanity, God (awyrgan usually refers to ‘an utterance spoken by God, or someone speaking in God’s name’),154 or both.155 Such outcast figures were often described not only as sub-human, but specifically as lupine, often as a result of a relationship with Satan. Satan is the archetypal outcast from God; outlawed from heaven for his pride, in Old English literature this fallen angel is frequently described as awyrged ‘accursed’.156 After his downfall, this ‘accursed’ outcast compounded his Enrico Campanile, ‘Meaning and Prehistory of Old Irish Cú Glas’, Journal of Indo-European Studies, 7 (1978), 237–47 (p. 242). 150 BT s.v. wearg, p. 1177. 151 Hart, p. 221. 152 DOE s.v. ā-wyrgan1 [accessed 21 January 2018]. It may be noteworthy that the same verb could also mean ‘to strangle, suffocate’ (DOE s.v. ā-wyrgan2 [accessed 21 January 2018]), perhaps suggesting an association with the wearg as a hanged criminal; see pp. 42–4 above. 153 DOE s.v. ā-wyrgan1 [accessed 21 January 2018]. 154 Ibid. 155 Early medieval English law-codes ‘indicate that exiles were also excommunicated’, losing ‘the right to protection from […] God’ as well as from the legal systems which governed society; Neville, Natural World, p. 84. As Jones notes, ‘a recurrent expression in the law codes’ written by Wulfstan ‘reveals the desire of the Church to assert the congruence of legal space and Christendom: “wið God (and) wið men þonne sy he utlah” [“then he is outlawed from God and from men”]’; Outlawry, p. 27. See, for example, Wulfstan, ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ed. by Alan Kennedy, ASE, 11 (1983), 57–81 (p. 74). 156 See DOE s.v. ā-wyrgan1 [accessed 21 January 2018]. As R. E. Woolf notes, ‘the devil in Old English poetry […] is always miserable, skulking wretchedly round the outskirts of the world. Fah ond freondleas [“accursed and friendless”; Elene, line 924], he is doomed perpetually to wadan wræclastas [“travel

149

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts outlawry by perpetrating wolf-like depredations upon Christ’s flock, as per the New Testament metaphor of the devil as a wolf in opposition to Christ as a Lamb and Shepherd,157 and as described in Christ I: Hafað se awyrgda wulf tostenced, deor dædscua, dryhten, þin eowde, wide towrecene.

(lines 256–8)

[The accursed wolf, the fierce agent of darkness, Lord, has driven your flock apart, scattered them widely.]

In turn, according to the Evangelium Nichodemi Satan was fæder ealra flymena the ‘father of all outlaws’.158 Not only might the proclamation of outlawry render the victim a sub-human outcast from human status, therefore, but the fact that outlaws could be aligned with the devil, and that the criminal’s misdeeds were often described as mirroring this demon’s lupine depredations, gave all the more impetus for these groups to be perceived as wolf-like. Andreas’s Mermedonians are one such example. These werige wrohtsmiðas ‘accursed criminals’ (line 86) live on an igland ‘island’ (line 15) apart from the rest of humankind, the only contact they have with other people comprising wolf-like depredations upon visitors to the island, whom the Mermedonians keep as livestock (lines 21–39). This bestial behaviour has rendered them sub-human (if their separation from the rest of humanity had not already), as suggested by the fact that they are epitheted as wælwulfas 'slaughter-wolves' (line 149). As deofles þegnas ‘thanes of the devil’ (line 43) with mod onwod / under dimscuan deofles larum ‘spirits imbued with the darkness of the devil’s teaching’ (lines 140–1), moreover, their depredations upon their sheep-like captives and the lamb-like Matthew and Andrew thus also represent the devil’s attacks on Christ's flock. Indeed, a page has been removed from the Vercelli manuscript at a point in the narrative where a reference ‘to Christ’s words about sending his disciples



157



158

exile-paths”; Christ and Satan, line 120]’; ‘The Devil in Old English Poetry’, Review of English Studies NS, 4 (1953), 1–12 (p. 8). ‘The idea of the devil as wolf, originating ultimately in the Good Shepherd passage [John 10.11–17], is a familiar one in Christian literature and is taken up by Anglo-Saxon writers’ (Hugh Magennis, Anglo-Saxon Appetites: Food and Drink and Their Consumption in Old English and Related Literature (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999), p. 67), such as Ælfric and the authors of Christ I and the Old English Martyrology; Stanley Marvin Wiersma, ‘A Linguistic Analysis of Words Referring to Monsters in Beowulf’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1961), p. 42. Jones, p. 28; see Euangelium Nichodemi: Old English Text and Translation, in Two Old English Apocrypha and Their Manuscript Source: ‘The Gospel of Nichodemus’ and ‘The Avenging of the Saviour’, ed. and trans. by J. E. Cross et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 139–247 (p. 225).

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws as sheep among wolves’ is found in the poem’s prose analogues,159 suggesting that at some point in the approximately seventy-four lines which are missing,160 the Mermedonians were directly compared to the New Testament wolf. Outcasts from both humanity and from God because of their wolflike and devilish behaviour, the Mermedonians may also act like wolves because they are outlawed werige wrohtsmiðas ‘accursed criminals’ (line 86), since their cannibalism ‘is not just a monstrous practice, but a sign specifically of their separation from God’ who, ‘according to medieval exegetes, […] punishes a people that forsakes Him by making it cannibalistic’.161 The Mermedonians’ wolfish depredations on other people, therefore, are both cause and manifestation of their outlawry from God; in a self-fulfilling cycle, they act like wolves because of their outlawry from God, and are outlawed from God because of their devilish and wolfish crimes, in turn cementing their similarities with the outlawed wolf, Satan. Since ‘the verbal parallels between Andreas and Beowulf are high in number, and there is a persistent likeness between these poems’, it is generally accepted that the Andreas-poet ‘internalized much of’ and ‘borrow[ed] […] widely’ from Beowulf.162 One such ‘likeness’, though not a verbal parallel in stricto sensu, is the similarity between the language used to describe the Mermedonians and Grendelkin; like Andrew’s adversaries, the monsters of Beowulf are also described by the terms wearg (in both nominal and adjectival form) and wulf: Grendel is a heorowearh ‘savage accursed being’ (line 1267) and a(n) wergan gast ‘accursed spirit’ (line 133), while his mother is a(n) grundwyrgenne ‘accursed being of the deep’ (line 1518) and a brimwylf ‘sea-wolf’ (lines 1506 and 1599). The atrocities perpetrated by these monsters include trespassing, theft, and murder committed against the community at Heorot. Their very existence, in fact, is a crime; the Grendelkin are descended from the first

159



160



161



162

Magennis, p. 66 n.37; see Matthew 10.16 and Luke 10.3 for the corresponding biblical passage. For this passage in one of the poem’s prose analogues, see Blickling Homily XIX: S. Andreas, in The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, from the Marquis of Lothian’s Unique MS. A.D. 971, ed. by Richard Morris, EETS OS, 73 (London: Trübner, 1880), pp. 229–49 (p. 237). See Richard North and Michael D. J. Bintley, eds and trans., Andreas: An Edition (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), pp. 265–6 for more on this missing section. Alexandra Bolintineanu, ‘The Land of Mermedonia in the Old English Andreas’, Neophilologus, 93 (2009), 149–64 (p. 153). For more on this, see John Casteen, ‘Andreas: Mermedonian Cannibalism and Figural Narration’, NM, 75 (1974), 74–8. North and Bintley, eds, Andreas, pp. 62 and 64 respectively. For more on this see ibid., pp. 62–81, and Alison M. Powell, ‘Verbal Parallels in Andreas and Its Relationship to Beowulf and Cynewulf’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts outlawed criminal, Cain (lines 107 and 1260–2), whom God feor forwræc, / […] mancynne fram ‘banished far away […] from mankind’ (lines 109–10) as punishment for his murder of Abel. As a result, untydras ealle onwocon, / eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas, / swylce gigantas ‘all unnatural creatures arose: ogres and elves and monsters, as well as giants’ (lines 111–13);163 Cain’s outlawry is written upon the bodies of his progeny, their existence a direct product of the fact that he was outcast from humanity.164 In turn, their monstrous forms render Cain’s descendants outcasts from humanity both figuratively and literally. Just as God forwræc ‘banished’ Cain (line 109), therefore, Grendel (and his mother) wræclastas træd ‘trod exile-paths’ (line 1352) in outlawry from the goldsele gumena ‘gold-hall of men’ (line 715), Heorot, which symbolises ‘the paradise of joyous human fellowship’.165 Like Cain, who occupied the westen ‘wilderness’ (line 1265) following his expulsion, the Grendelkin are thus instead forced to heold ‘inhabit’ the moras ‘moors’ and fen ‘fen’ (lines 103–4). As both criminals and outlaws, it is possible that the Grendelkin might be associated with wolves. Indeed, the term heorowearh ‘savage accursed being’ (line 1267) is analogous to heoruwulf ‘sword-wolf’ and herewulf ‘battle-wolf’, words used to describe the Egyptians and Elamites in Exodus (line 181) and Genesis A (line 2015) respectively. Both poems, with their wolf-like, predatory, corpse-plundering warriors,166 may have served as sources for the Beowulf-poet.167 Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that the analogous hapax heorowearh is used of this savage, predatory son of the brimwylf ‘sea-wolf’ (lines 1506 and 1599). Grendel and his mother are also characterised in ways similar to the wolfish Mermedonians of Andreas. Like these cannibals, Beowulf’s monsters are bestial outlaws from humanity as a result of crimes committed against it which, in behaviour analogous to that of the Mermedonians, consists of wolflike depredations upon people whom they cast ‘in the subordinate status of livestock’.168 In so doing, they both avenge and compound their (wolfish) outlawry; Grendel retaliates for his exile from the kinship of humankind and from the Danish community by conducting ‘directed attacks […]

163



164 165



166 167



168

Later in the poem, another description of Cain’s home in the westen ‘wilderness’ is followed by the phrase Þanon woc fela / geosceaftgasta ‘Thence woke many creatures of old’ (lines 1265–6). See p. 172 below for more on this. Edward B. Irving, Jr, Rereading ‘Beowulf’ (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 138. See p. 27 above. See Andy Orchard, A Critical Companion to ‘Beowulf’ (Cambridge: Brewer, 2003), pp. 166–8. James Phillips, ‘In the Company of Predators: Beowulf and the Monstrous Descendants of Cain’, Angelaki, 13.3 (2008), 41–52 (p. 49). For more on the Grendelkin’s wolf-like nature, see chapter five below.

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws against the society and social space from which he is excluded’.169 Killing the Danes, occupying the hall in their stead, and refusing to pay wergild as compensation for the murders (lines 154–8), Grendel renders moot the legal obligations which form the fabric of ordered civilisation, much like the wolfish criminals and outlaws who disregard human standards of behaviour.170 His mother, meanwhile, attacks at the heart of the Danish society when she murders Æschere, Hrothgar’s most beloved thane (lines 1322–9).171 As with the Mermedonians, the Grendelkin are not only outlawed because of their crimes, but their wolfish, cannibalistic depredations upon the Danish community may be a result of their outlawry from God.172 In turn, the crimes that these monsters commit, in mirroring the depredations of Satan’s demonic agents, distance the Grendelkin further from Him.173 Indeed, the Grendelkin are closely allied with the devil, the first outlaw from God, and are termed by ‘epithets proper to [him]’174 such as deofol ‘demon’ or ‘devil’ (line 1680), wælgæst ‘slaughter-spirit’ (lines 1331 and 1995), and ellorgast ‘alien spirit’ (lines 807, 1349, 1617, and 1621). The latter term, with its prefix meaning ‘elsewhere’,175 highlights their ‘apartness from the world of men’,176 just as the description of Grendel as a(n) wergan gast ‘accursed spirit’ (line 133) emphasises his outcast status. The similarities between Grendel and Satan are cemented by the fact that the ambiguous lines Swa ða drihtguman dreamum lifdon, / eadiglice, oð ðæt an ongan / fyrene fremman feond on helle ‘Thus those people lived blessedly in happiness, until a solitary fiend from hell came to commit wicked deeds’ (lines 99–101) could refer both to the Fall of Man and the initial depredations of Grendel, thus conflating the Danes with the first humans and the monster with Satan.177 Since Satan himself is frequently

169

172 170 171



173 174



175 176



177

Alan S. Ambrisco, ‘Trolling for Outcasts in Sturla Gunnarsson’s Beowulf and Grendel’, Journal of Popular Culture, 46 (2013), 243–56 (p. 245). See pp. 26 and 28 above. See pp. 197–9 below for more on Æschere and his death. As Magennis notes, ‘that Grendel is not just an animal but a kind of quasi-human monster descended from the race of Cain, humanity gone wrong, imparts an association of cannibalism to his flesh-eating’; Appetites, p. 56. Although Grendel’s Mother is not seen eating flesh it seems likely that she too is guilty of cannibalism, since ‘Hrothgar associates [her] with the excesses of Grendel, assuming that she, like her son, will have eaten the body of her victim [lines 1331–3]’; ibid., p. 57. See Phillips, p. 49. Kemp Malone, ‘Grendel and His Abode’, in Studia philologica et litteraria in honorem L. Spitzer, ed. by A. G. Hatcher and K. L. Selig (Bern: Francke, 1958), pp. 297–308 (p. 298). DOE s.v. ellor [accessed 29 July 2019]. Jay Ruud, ‘Gardner’s Grendel and Beowulf: Humanizing the Monster’, Thoth, 14 (1974), 3–17 (p. 9). See C. J. E. Ball, ‘“Beowulf” 99–101’, Notes and Queries, 18 (1971), 163.

49

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts compared to wolves in biblical, exegetical, and homiletic material, the similarities between the Grendelkin and the devil may have extended to wolfishness. Indeed, this is implied by the fact that Grendel is termed a deorc deaþscua ‘dark death-shadow’ (line 160), a description which corresponds to the phrase deor dædscua ‘fierce agent of darkness’, used of Satan in Christ I immediately after the description of him as an awyrgda wulf ‘accursed wolf’ (lines 256–7).178 Both Grendel and his mother also live in a mere analogous to Satan’s abode, hell, the depiction of which appears to have been modelled on that of the hell-mouth found in Blickling Homily XVI.179 This hellscape is a lake inhabited by weargas ‘accursed beings’ and fynd þara on nicra onlicnesse ‘demons in the likeness of water-monsters’ who, as they clutch at the damned souls, are compared to wolves: Swa Sanctus Paulus wæs geseonde on norðanweardne þisne middangeard, þær ealle wætero niðergewitað, & he þær geseah ofer ðæm wætere sumne harne stan; & wæron norð of ðæm stane awexene swiðe hrimige bearwas, & ðær wæron þystro-genipo, & under þæm stane wæs niccra eardung & wearga. & he geseah þæt on ðæm clife hangodan on ðæm is gean bearwum manige swearte saula be heora handum gebundne; & þa fynd þara on nicra onlicnesse heora gripende wæron, swa swa grædig wulf.180 [So St Paul was looking upon the northward part of this earth, where all the waters go down, and there he saw a certain grey stone. A frosty wood had grown north of the stone, and there were dark clouds. Below the

178



179



180

Edward B. Irving, Jr has suggested that deor dædscua ought to be emended to match the phrase deorc deaþscua in Beowulf; ‘Editing Old English Verse: The Ideal’, in New Approaches to Editing Old English Verse, ed. by Sarah Larratt Keefer and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge: Brewer, 1998), pp. 11–20 (p. 18). Richard Morris first noticed that this passage displayed a ‘direct reminiscence’ of the description of the Grendel-mere in Beowulf; see Blickling Homilies, p. vii, and see Carleton Brown, ‘Beowulf and the Blickling Homilies and Some Textual Notes’, PMLA, 53 (1938), 905–16 (p. 908) for a side-by-side comparison of the two passages. Studies by Rowland L. Collins (‘Blickling Homily XVI and the Dating of Beowulf’, in Medieval Studies Conference, Aachen 1983: Language and Literature, ed. by Wolf-Dietrich Bald and Horst Weinstock, Bamberger Beiträge zur englischen Sprachwissenschaft, 15 (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1984), pp. 61–9) and Kevin S. Kiernan (‘The Legacy of Wiglaf: Saving a Wounded Beowulf’, in The ‘Beowulf’ Reader, ed. by Peter S. Baker, Basic Readings in Anglo-Saxon England, 1 (New York, NY: Routledge, 2000), pp. 195–218) have affirmed the likelihood that the poet drew on the homily, rather than vice versa. Blickling Homily XVII: To Sanctae Michaheles Mæssan, in Blickling Homilies, ed. and trans. by Morris, pp. 196–211 (pp. 209–11).

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A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws stone was the dwelling-place of water-monsters and accursed beings.181 And he saw that on the cliff against the icy woods many dark souls were hanging, bound by their hands, and the demons in the likeness of water-monsters were grasping at them, just as would a greedy wolf.]

Like these demons, Grendel and his mother inhabit a hellish nicera mere ‘mere of water-monsters’ (line 845) where they live in outlawry from God. Grendel too is a(n) wergan gast ‘accursed spirit’ (line 133), echoing the description of the demons who inhabit Blickling XVI’s watery hellscape as weargas ‘accursed beings’. Perhaps, then, the hapax heorowearh ‘savage accursed being’ was constructed by the poet, playing upon the heoruwulfas ‘sword-wolves’ and herewulfas ‘battle-wolves’ found in their poetic sources (Exodus and Genesis A), and the weargas of this homily. Grendel’s Mother, meanwhile, is termed a(n) grundwyrgenne ‘accursed being of the deep’ (line 1518), a word which likewise recalls the weargas of Blickling XVI and their hellish home. Like these weargas, who clutch at their victims swa swa grædig wulf ‘just as would a greedy wolf’, the grundwyrgenne also behaves in the same manner, grasping Beowulf as he descends into the mere (lines 1501–2). Indeed, shortly afterwards she too is likened to a wolf, being twice described as a brimwylf ‘sea-wolf’ (lines 1506 and 1599).182 Wearg is an appropriate term for the Grendelkin in every sense of both nominal and adjectival forms. These monsters are ‘evil, vile, malignant, [and] accursed’ demonic spirits who carry out the works of the awyrgda wulf ‘accursed wolf’, Satan, yet at the same time they are human(oid) criminals who depredate upon other people like rapacious wolves,

181



182

In every other attestation of wearg the meaning ‘criminal’ is evident, but the meaning in this instance, the only attestation where the term does not refer to a human being, is less clear (another appearance of the term in Christ and Satan which also refers to demons in hell is listed in BT under the entry for the noun and is defined as ‘accursed ones’ (s.v. wearg(-h), p. 1177), but in his edition of the poem, Robert Emmett Finnegan emends the manuscript’s wergum to wergu, which he translates as ‘misery’; see ‘Christ and Satan’: A Critical Edition (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1977), p. 94). This instance in Blickling XVI thus necessitates the second definition given in BT, ‘monster, malignant being, evil spirit’ (s.v. wearg(-h), p. 1177), which mirrors the meaning of the adjective, ‘evil, vile, malignant, accursed’ (s.v. wearg, p. 1177). Given that wearg in adjectival form is often used to describe evil gæstas ‘spirits’, the same types of creatures referred to by the nominal wearg in Blickling, the term is translated here as ‘accursed being’ since this phrase connotes evildoing or malignancy punished by damnation or condemnation, like the awyrged ‘accursed’ Satan who is ‘consign[ed] to perdition’; DOE s.v. ā-wyrgan1 [accessed 21 January 2018]. While the manuscript reads brimwyl at line 1506, in the DOE this is listed as an error for brimwylf (s.v. brim-wylf [accessed 3 August 2018]; see also Stanley, p. 52), although it has also been suggested that brimwyl is an error for brimwif; Signe M. Carlson, ‘The Monsters of Beowulf: Creations of Literary Scholars’, Journal of American Folklore, 80 (1967), 357–64 (pp. 358–9).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts outlawed by God and the community at Heorot by dint of their transgressions against both. This interpretation is congruent with the fact that the Grendelkin, as is well known, are hybrid creatures whose monstrosity is attributable, in part, to their multifarious identities, which fluctuate between the categories of human, demon, and beast.183 Wolfishness, however, is a characteristic common to both demonic spirits of Satan who are outcast from God, and criminals who are outcast from human society and status. As will be discussed in more detail in chapter five, the Grendelkin’s wolfishness unites both facets of their identities, allowing for a cohesive reading of these characters based around their lupine natures. That the Grendelkin are demon/human hybrids reflects the ambiguous nature of another monster found in the Old English corpus: the werewulf ‘man-wolf’ described in three of Wulfstan’s compositions, his ‘Homily 16b’, Institutes of Polity, and Cnut’s Winchester Code I: Đonne motan þa hyrdas beon swiðe wacole 7 geornlice clipigende þe wið þone þeodscaðan folc sculon warian, þæt sindon biscopas 7 mæssepreostas, þe godcunde heorda bewarian 7 bewerian sculon mid wislican laran, þæt se wodfræca werewulf to swiðe ne slite ne to fela ne abite of godcundre heorde.184 [Then the shepherds – those who must defend their people against the criminal enemy of the people – must be extremely vigilant, calling out zealously. They are bishops and priests; they guard the heavenly herd and must defend it with sagacious teachings, so that the ravening manwolf does not excessively rend nor devour too many of the godly flock.]

This passage is an adaptation of Matthew 7.15 (‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves’), the werewulf ‘man-wolf’ thus simultaneously both a wolfish heretic in human form and Satan himself, the ‘demon shape-shifter’ who here ‘comes to the unobservant shepherd cloaked as a man, instead of the scriptural wolf cloaked as a sheep’,185 wodfræca ‘ravening’ as he pursues the souls of God’s flock. He is a wolf in human clothing. Although an interpretation of were- as ‘man’ fits neatly with the modern conception of the werewolf as a human/wolf hybrid, the fact that this prefix is spelt not as wer- but as were- allows it to be taken instead as wearg – which is also ‘variously spelled weri and wari’ – ‘made into a pun’, so that werewulf



183 184



185

For more on this, see p. 169 below. The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. by Dorothy Bethurum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 241. The other instances of the term in the Institutes of Polity and Cnut’s Winchester Code I are used in much the same context as here. Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 361.

52

A Lexicological Survey of Lupine Outlaws means not ‘man-wolf’ but ‘criminal wolf’.186 This would concur with the description of the werewulf ‘man-wolf’ as a þeodscaða ‘criminal against the community’ or ‘spoiler of the community’,187 as well as the fact that the werewolf has ‘historically been aligned with the exiled outlaw or bandit in both laws and literature’,188 with ‘several authors hav[ing] drawn attention to [the] association of wolves and human outlaws as one basis for the werewolf belief’.189 Given the existence of the homonymic adjectival wearg, however, the compound may also be interpreted as ‘accursed wolf’, which would concur with the fact that when Satan is described as an awyrgda wulf ‘accursed wolf’ in Christ I (line 256), he appears ‘in a context similar to the one Wulfstan describes – i.e., a metaphoric flock that has been harmed’.190 That this term is ambiguous reflects the ambiguous identity of this creature, a monstrous entity who may be conceived of as both a wolfish human ravaging the community of sheep-like people, outlawed from humanity as a result of his crimes, as well as a demon who is ‘accursed’ and outlawed from God for his wolfish depredations against His flock.

Conclusion: A Wolf Behind the wearg? The temptation to take ‘wolf’ as a secondary meaning of the nominal wearg is understandable. Immediately adjacent to wearg in the linguistic family tree is the Old Norse cognate vargr, a term with a dual meaning of both ‘criminal’/’outlaw’ and ‘wolf’ and which likely travelled across the North Sea with the settlers who lived alongside native speakers in Anglo-Scandinavian England, and whose language transformed Old English, both in the form of lexical borrowings and the borrowing of meaning from Old Norse words into their Old English cognates. In nominal form wearg meant ‘criminal’ primarily (often hanged criminals specifically), while the adjectival homonym meant ‘accursed’ or ‘outcast’. Criminals, victims of hanging, and outcasts/outlaws from God and from human communities could all be associated with wolves, while both criminals and outlaws were frequently aligned with Satan, the outlaw from God who attacked lamb-like Christians in the form of an awyrgda wulf ‘accursed wolf’. 188 186 187



189



190

Ibid., p. 364. BT s.v. þeōd-sceaþa, p. 1049. Victoria Blud, ‘Wolves’ Heads and Wolves’ Tales: Women and Exile in Bisclavret and Wulf and Eadwacer’, Exemplaria, 26 (2014), 328–46 (p. 328). W. M. S. Russell and Claire Russell, ‘The Social Biology of Werewolves’, in Animals in Folklore, ed. by J. R. Porter and W. M. S. Russell (Cambridge: Brewer, 1978), pp. 143–82 (p. 166). Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 364.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Coupled with the fact that wearg co-occurs with wulf on too many occasions to attribute solely to coincidence, one might wonder whether the figure named or described as wearg may have been conceived of as wolflike as a result of their criminal occupation and/or their accursed nature, and from thence wonder why wearg should not, in fact, have meant ‘wolf’. However, the salient point here is that the terms co-occur. One does not replace the other, and none of the above evidence suggests that wearg could ever function as a synonym for wulf, as could Norse vargr with ulf: ‘in recorded Old English, wearg and wulf never converged in meaning’.191 Yet the pursuit of neat definition(s) results in the ‘flatten[ing] out [of] figurative language’ in attempts ‘to resolve […] intended ambiguities’,192 with wearg either being denied a wolfish association altogether, or erroneously attributed a secondary meaning of ‘wolf’. Neither approach does the term justice. A messier, less clear-cut, but also less restrictive solution to the question that remains over the meaning of wearg is required, a solution which accommodates for the complexities of lived language by denying that human tendency to binarize and neatly categorise, neither admitting ‘wolf’ into its semantic range, nor denying that wearg has a whiff of wolfishness about it. This term, like the accursed, wolfish criminals it describes, occupies ‘a zone of indistinction’,193 a space not of strict meaning, definition, and translation but of cultural association and nuanced connotation in which it is deeply, irretrievably embedded.



191 192



193

Ibid., p. 336. Fred C. Robinson, ‘Lexicography and Literary Criticism: A Caveat’, in Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature, in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, ed. by James L. Rosier, Janua Linguarum. Series Maior, 37 (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), pp. 99–110 (p. 105). Agamben, p. 109.

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2 The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf

L

opez describes the fear of wild animals, or theriophobia, as no more than the ‘fear of the projected beast in oneself’, at the core of which is ‘the fear of one’s own nature’.1 ‘In its headiest manifestation’, he writes, ‘theriophobia is projected onto a single animal’, a ‘scapegoat upon which [the human] could heap his sins’ and ‘externalize[] his bestial nature’.2 A prime example is the perceived wolfishness of outlaws and criminals. The wolf has become a repository for impulses deemed inhuman, and so to contemplate these animals has become an exercise in contemplating oneself. ‘The wolf’, as Lopez states, ‘takes your stare and turns it back on you’,3 forcing the person with whom it exchanges this glance to turn their stare inwards, to contemplate what it means to be ‘human’ rather than ‘animal’. Like Derrida’s cat, the wolf who looks into the eyes of a human forces its recipient to question ‘the bordercrossing from which vantage man dares to announce himself to himself, thereby calling himself by the name that he believes he gives himself’.4 Yet the shared gaze between wolf and human not only forces the looked-upon person to confront ‘the ends of man’ as they must do under any ‘gaze called “animal”’.5 In the wolf’s case, this theoretical contemplation of ‘the ends of man’ gains concreteness and immediacy as, according to a superstition which circulated in classical and early medieval Europe, this animal’s eyes held the power to strip a human of their ability to speak. In so doing, the wolf removed the very faculty by which the person might declare himself ‘human’, the facet which evidenced his difference from animal-kind by giving voice to his capability for rational thought.6 The wolf’s stare erodes the species distinction like that of no other animal, his onlooker losing the oratorical abilities which both evidence his superiority over the ‘animal other’ and make possible its assertion. 3 4

Lopez, p. 140. Ibid., pp. 140 and 226 respectively. Ibid., p. 4. Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. by Marie-Luise Mallet and trans. by David Wills (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 12. 5 Ibid. 6 See pp. 11–12 above. 1 2

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts True to the speech-stealing powers of the wolf which it purports, this superstition remains relatively poorly documented even despite the fact that it appears in numerous keystone texts such as Pliny’s Naturalis historia, Isidore’s Etymologiae, and Ambrose’s Hexameron. In contrast, a proverb which may have originated with the superstition has received greater attention.7 Idiomatically equivalent to the modern expression ‘speak of the devil and he will appear’, this proverb is likewise spoken when the person under discussion has suddenly entered. Instead of ‘the devil’, this person is described as the lupus in fabula ‘wolf in the story’,8 perhaps because by intruding upon an abruptly-halted conversation about them, this person ‘steals’ the conversers’ speech like the wolf of the superstition.9 While this maxim may have been born of the superstition, the two do not co-occur until the fourth century ad, in a textual commentary written by the grammarian Aelius Donatus. The superstition’s full line of transmission prior and subsequent to this point is plotted in the following pages for the first time, beginning with its earliest appearances in Ancient Greek Socratic dialogue and pastoral poetry, through to its usage in Roman natural histories and to its latter attestations in early medieval European grammatical treatises. The textual transmission of the proverb, being far better understood, is surveyed in the below note.10

7



8



9



10

See A. Otto, Die Sprichwörter und Sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig: Teubner, 1890), pp. 199–200; Kenneth M. Abbott, ‘Lupus in Fabula’, Classical Journal, 52 (1956), 117–22; and Kőrizs Imre, ‘Lupus in fabula’, Studia Litteraria, 54.1–2 (2015), 46–51. Although Abbott and Imre discuss the possibility that the proverb originated with the superstition, neither treat the latter in its own right. H. T. Riley, ed., Dictionary of Latin Quotations, Proverbs, Maxims, and Mottos, Classical and Mediæval, Including Law Terms and Phrases (London: Bell & Daldy, 1866), p. 210. As with the Modern English maxim, the lupus in fabula proverb may be a product of the taboo that ‘talk[ing] about the wolf’, or devil, ‘may bring him’; Abbott, p. 121. Both superstition and proverb have distinct lines of textual transmission until they were first associated by Donatus (see the following section ‘The Transmission of the Speech-stealing Wolf Superstition’), with no extant evidence suggesting that they had a prior relationship. However, it does seem likely that the maxim originated with the superstition since, as Neal R. Norrick notes, ‘proverbs are by their nature items of folklore enmeshed in systems of stories, allusions, proverbial phrases, superstitions and sayings’; ‘Proverbs as Set Phrases’, in Phraseology: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, ed. by Harald Burger et al., Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science, 28.1 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 381–93 (p. 389). The proverb is first attested in two Roman plays – Plautus’s Stichus (c. 200 bc), in the form lupus in sermone, and Terence’s Adelphi (c. 160 bc) – and was used in a letter written by Cicero in the following century (first century bc). Five centuries later it appears in the Ars major of Aelius Donatus (fourth century ad), and in the commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid by Servius (fourth to fifth

56

The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf While plotting the superstition’s transmission in classical and early medieval Europe is a valuable exercise in itself, it is not the sole objective here. Rather, tracing the textual history of the superstition allows for the more specific consideration of the possibility that the belief in the speech-stealing power of wolves was current in early medieval England, based upon the transmission of the texts in which it appears. The manuscript, booklist, and citation evidence of the texts in which the lupus in fabula appears are thus also described below, to assess the potential extent of its circulation in early medieval England via these works. As well as this evidence, the currency of the superstition in early medieval England may also be suggested by the existence of two passages from an Old English charm and an Anglo-Latin letter, which appear to allude to the lupus in fabula.11

The Transmission of the Speech-stealing Wolf Superstition Plato’s Republic, composed in the fourth century bc, may provide the earliest textual reference to the speech-stealing wolf superstition. This statement is not expressed in certain terms since the lupus in fabula is not mentioned specifically – but may be alluded to – in these Socratic dialogues. The lupus in question is a character named Thrasymachus who, during a heated discussion, ‘gather[ed] himself up like a wild beast’ and ‘sprang on’ his companions with an aggressive verbal affront, ‘as if he wanted to tear [them] to pieces’.12 Socrates, narrating, states that he:



11



12

century ad). Fifth- or sixth-century ad African grammarian Pompeius Maurus discussed the proverb in his commentary on Donatus, as did sixth-century ad Latin grammarian Eugraphius, who utilised Donatus’s commentary on Terence’s Adelphi (discussed at pp. 64–5 below) when composing his own commentary on the same text. The proverb is also mentioned in another commentary on Donatus composed by an anonymous ninth-century Irishman living on the Continent, the Ars Laureshamensis, while in a letter written to Charlemagne the Irish monk Dungal described the lupus in fabula as a vulgari proverbio (Dungal, Epistolae, in Epistolae Karolini aevi II, ed. by Ernst Dümmler, MGH, Epistolae in quarto, 4 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), pp. 568–85 (p. 571)) ‘common proverb’. As noted above (p. 12 n.62), the phrase lupus in fabula is used as shorthand for the speech-stealing wolf superstition although, strictly speaking, this phrase belongs to the proverb. When the latter is being referred to specifically, the term ‘proverb’ is always used to differentiate. Plato, Republic, ed. and trans. by Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy, Loeb Classical Library, 237 and 276, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), i: Books 1–5, 41–3.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts was astounded, and looking at him I was filled with fear and I believe that if I hadn’t looked at him before he looked at me, I’d have become speechless. But at the very moment he began to be exasperated as a result of the argument, I glanced at him first, so that I was able to answer him.13

As Alexandra Pappas notes, most ‘commentators on Plato […] will explain this as the earliest reference’ to the speech-stealing wolf superstition since, although Thrasymachus is described only as beast-like rather than lupine specifically, the power of sight is the crux upon which the retention or loss of voice turns. This detail gains significance in light of the first definite textual attestation of the superstition in Theocritus’s Idyll 14 (third century bc).14 In this Ancient Greek bucolic poem, Aeschinas, who is in love with a woman named Cynisca, describes a drinking game played at a gathering he had recently attended: we decided to propose a toast in neat wine to whomever each of us wished; the only rule was that each had to say the name out loud. We all spoke a name and drank, as agreed; but she [Cynisca] said nothing, even though I was right there. How do you think I felt? As a joke someone said, ‘Aren’t you going to speak? Have you seen a wolf?’ ‘How clever!’ she said, and started to blush; you could easily have kindled a torch from her. It’s Lycus […] she was being burned up with that famous love of hers for him.15

The pun upon Lycus’s lupine name here clearly alludes to the speech-stealing wolf superstition,16 although Cynisca is struck dumb after having ‘seen’ the ‘wolf’, rather than as a result of having been ‘seen’ herself. In the next textual attestation of the superstition, the pattern of ‘seeing’ and speech-stealing reverts to that found in the Republic. In this text, Virgil’s ninth Eclogue (first century bc), a magician named Moeris – who



13 14



15



16

Ibid., p. 43. Alexandra Pappas, ‘Remember to Cry Wolf: Visual and Verbal Declarations of Lykos Kalos’, in Orality, Literacy, Memory in the Ancient Greek and Roman World, ed. by E. Anne Mackay, Mnemosyne: Supplements Monographs on Greek and Roman Language and Literature, 298 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 97–114 (pp. 99–100). In an adventurous interpretation, Pappas relates this passage from Plato and the superstition in general to the inscription Lykos on Louvre G 105, a ‘red-figure cup painted by Onesimos in the early fifth century [bc]’; ibid., p. 97, and see pp. 100–13 for this analysis. Idyll 14, in Theocritus, Moschus, Bion, ed. by Neil Hopkinson, Loeb Classical Library, 28 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), pp. 194–203 (pp. 197–9). Hopkinson, ed., Theocritus, Moschus, Bion, p. 199 n.11.

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf himself is able to transform into a wolf – blames this animal’s speech-stealing gaze for his muteness: saepe ego longos cantando puerum memini me condere soles: nunc oblita mihi tot carmina: vox quoque Moerin iam fugit ipsa; lupi Moerin videre priores. [oft as a boy I recall that with song I would lay the long summer days to rest. Now I have forgotten all my songs. Even voice itself now fails Moeris; the wolves have seen Moeris first.]17

It is highly likely that Virgil knew of Theocritus’s speech-stealing ‘wolf’, as the Idylls provided a model for the Eclogues.18 Although this might establish a direct line of textual transmission for the superstition, Theocritus’s reference to the speech-stealing power of the wolf is not explicit. Hence, even if Virgil had encountered the speech-stealing wolf of Idyll 14, the allusiveness of Theocritus’s pun suggests that Virgil must have had access to other source(s) in which the superstition appeared. Yet no other textual sources featuring the superstition are attested during or prior to Virgil’s time, and although this may simply be a case of a lost link in the chain of transmission, it is possible that the superstition circulated orally – as superstitions often do – in Ancient Greece and Rome. Indeed, this may be suggested by the fact that neither Theocritus nor Virgil ‘spell out’ the superstition; the meaning of both passages, especially Theocritus’s pun, would be lost upon those without prior knowledge of the superstition. Perhaps, then, the superstition was prevalent enough that neither poet deemed further elucidation necessary. A passage found at the beginning of the section on wolves in Book VIII of Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia (first century ad) may support this supposition: Sed in Italia quoque creditur luporum visus esse noxius, vocemque homini quem priores contemplentur adimere ad praesens. [But in Italy also it is believed that the sight of wolves is harmful, and that if they look at a man before he sees them, it temporarily deprives him of utterance.]19

17



18



19

Eclogue IX, in Virgil: ‘Eclogues’, ‘Georgics’, ‘Aeneid’ I–VI, ed. and trans. by H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. edn, ed. by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library, 63 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 82–9 (lines 51–4). R. O. A. M. Lyne, intro., Virgil: ‘The Eclogues’ and ‘The Georgics’, trans. by C. Day Lewis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. xiii. Pliny, Natural History: Books 8–11, ed. and trans. by H. Rackham, 2nd edn, Loeb Classical Library, 353 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 58–9.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Although the historia ‘contains many Virgilian references and allusions’,20 with Pliny himself listing Virgil as a source for Book VIII in his table of contents, a solely textual line of transmission is again precluded by the fact that Pliny refers to this as a superstition believed in Ancient Rome. Perhaps Pliny – himself a Roman – encountered the lupus in fabula firsthand; it is not uncommon to find ‘traditional or popular beliefs, even myths of folktales’ within the Naturalis historia.21 Two centuries later, Solinus repeated the same information in his Collectanea rerum memorabilium (third century ad), describing how Italia lupos habet quod cum ceteris simile non sit22 ‘Italy has wolves which have no similarities to others’, because they have the power to deprive a person of their ability to speak. The likelihood that this evidences a continued belief in the superstition in Italy is precluded by the fact that the Collectanea is greatly indebted to the Naturalis historia.23 Indeed, Solinus betrays his lack of personal knowledge regarding a real-world belief in the superstition by his replacement of Pliny’s in Italia quoque creditor […] ‘in Italy also it is believed […]’, with a phrase not implicative of circulating folkloric belief: Italia lupos habet […] ‘Italy has wolves […]’. Another century passes until the superstition reappears in the textual record, in three of the works of St Ambrose (fourth century ad). Although Ambrose knew of Pliny’s Naturalis historia24 and he ‘held [Virgil’s] Eclogues in some esteem’,25 his description of the speech-stealing wolf is expanded far beyond the fundamental details regarding the superstition found in these potential sources of his. Rather, Ambrose gives almost entirely unique descriptions of the wolf’s speech-stealing powers, which he then interprets allegorically in terms of the metaphorical wolves of the New Testament, the devil and his agents, who prey upon Christians. In the Hexameron, for example, Ambrose states that: These ‘references and allusions’, however, are mostly to the Georgics; Richard T. Bruère, ‘Pliny the Elder and Virgil’, Classical Philology, 51 (1956), 228– 46 (p. 228). 21 G. E. R. Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 135. 22 Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium, ed. by Theodor Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1895), p. 40. 23 Kai Brodersen, ‘The Geographies of Pliny and His “Ape” Solinus’, in Brill’s Companion to Ancient Geography: The Inhabited World in Greek and Roman Tradition, ed. by Serena Bianchetti, Michele Cataudella, and Hans-Joachim Gehrke (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 298–310 (p. 305). 24 Henry Chadwick, The Church in Ancient Society: From Galilee to Gregory the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 361. 25 John J. Savage, trans., Saint Ambrose: ‘Hexameron’, ‘Paradise’, and ‘Cain and Abel’, The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, 42 (New York, NY: Fathers of the Church, 1961), p. vii.

20

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf Lupus si prior hominem viderit, vocem eripit et despicit eum tamquam victor vocis ablatae: idem si se praevisum senserit, deponit ferociam, non potest currere. […] Ergo ferae norunt ea petere quae sibi prosint: tu ignoras, o homo, remedia tua. Tu nescis quomodo virtutem eripias adversario, ut te tanquam praeventus lupus effugere non possit, ut oculo tuae mentis eius perfidiam deprehendas et prior cursum verborum eius inpedias, inpudentiam eius et acumen disputationis obtundas. Quod si te ille praevenerit, vocem tibi auferet. Et si ommutueris, solve amictum tuum, ut sermonem resolvas, et si in te insurrexerit lupus, petram cape et fugit. Petra tua Christus est. Si ad Christum confugias, fugit lupus nec terrere te poterit.26 [A wolf takes away a man’s power of speech by first staring at him. The wolf despises this man over whom he is victorious by reason of his loss of speech. On the other hand, if a wolf perceives that he has been seen first, he loses his fierce character and is unable to run away. […] Wild animals know, therefore, what is beneficial to them, whereas you, man, have no knowledge of your remedies. You do not know how to snatch power away from your adversary, so that he, like a wolf taken by surprise, is unable to escape. You are unable by the eye of your mind to outwit his treacherous designs, to obstruct his flow of speech, and dull the edge of his impudent display of rhetoric. If he comes on you by surprise, he will deprive you of your power of speech. If dumbness comes upon you, loosen your foot-gear in order to loosen your tongue. If a wolf should attack you, pick up a rock – and he turns in flight! Christ is your rock. If you find refuge with Christ, the wolf will take flight and not terrify you.]27

In his Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucan, meanwhile, Ambrose utilises the superstition in a different context, comparing the lupine heretics of Luke 10.3 (‘Go: Behold I send you as lambs among wolves’) to the speech-stealing wolf, as they rob their victim of the Word of God: Tum praeterea si quem priores hominem viderint, vocem eius quadam naturae vi feruntur eripere: si autem homo prius eos viderit, exagitare memoratur. […] Nonne lupis istis haeretici conparandi sunt, qui insidiantur ovilibus Christi, fremunt circa caulas nocturno magis tempore quam diurno? Semper enim perfidis nox est, qui lucem Christi scaevae nebulis

26



27

Exameron, in Sancti Ambrosii opera, pars prima, qua continentur libri: ‘Exameron’, ‘De Paradiso’, ‘De Cain et Abel’, ‘De Noe’, ‘De Abraham’, ‘De Isaac’, ‘De Bono Mortis’, ed. by Karl Schenkl, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 32.1 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1896), pp. 2–261 (pp. 222–3). Hexameron, in Saint Ambrose: ‘Hexameron’, ‘Paradise’, and ‘Cain and Abel’, trans. by Savage, pp. 3–283 (pp. 244–5).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts interpretationis obducere et quantum in ipsis est fuscare conantur. […] Qui si quem versuta disputationis suae circumscriptione praevenerint, faciunt ommutescere; mutus est enim qui verbum dei non eadem qua est gloria confitetur. Cave ergo ne tibi vocem tollat haereticus, si prior eum non ipse deprehenderis. Serpit enim, dum latet eius perfidia; si autem conmenta inpietatis eius agnoveris, iacturam piae vocis timere non poteris. Cave igitur versutae disputationis venena; animam petunt, guttur invadunt, vitalibus adfigunt.28 [It is said (e.g. by Pliny) that if wolves are first to see someone, they have a natural power of striking that person dumb. But if the person should happen to see them first, he can put them to flight. […] Surely we may compare these wolves to heretics who lie in wait for Christ’s lambs? They prefer to prowl round the sheepfold by night rather than by day. Always, with these faithless ones, it is night. By their false interpretations, by the obscurity and cloudiness of their reasoning, they veil the light of Christ and, in so far as they can, they obscure it. […] If they get round someone by the specious cleverness of their arguments, they will rob him of the power of speech; they will make him dumb – for when we no longer proclaim the glory of the Word of God in all its truth then indeed we are dumb. Be careful that the heretic does not rob you of that Word. See the heretic before he sees you. He slithers and glides so long as his bad faith remains hidden. But if you recognise his wicked inventions, you need have no fear of losing the good Word. Be on your guard against the venom of false and specious discussions. These wolves want your soul, they leap at your throat, they sink their teeth into your vital parts and hang on.]29

In the Expositio de psalmo CXVIII,30 however, Ambrose apparently contradicts his interpretation of the superstition in the Expositio Lucan, describing how the evil lupus in fabula in human form is unable to steal the speech of the just, since the latter are already silent. It is possible that Ambrose read about the speech-stealing power of wolves in Pliny’s Naturalis historia or Virgil’s Eclogue IX and that he simply embellished what he discovered in these sources to meet his exegetical ends, especially given that he adapts the superstition according to the Expositio Lucan, ed. by Schenkl, pp. 301–2. Commentary on Luke, trans. by Ní Riain, pp. 205–6. Ní Riain’s parenthetical insertion, ‘e.g. by Pliny’, seems unwarranted here; Ambrose need not necessarily have drawn from this author specifically. 30 See Sancti Ambrosii opera, pars quinta: Expositio Psalmi CXVIII, ed. by M. Petschenig, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 62 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1913), pp. 217–18, and Homilies of Saint Ambrose on Psalm 118 (119), trans. by Ide Ní Riain (Dublin: Halcyon Press, 1998), p. 139.

28 29

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf context of each passage in which it appears. However, it is not only the allegorical material that is unique to Ambrose’s accounts; in the Hexameron, he prescribes a ‘cure’ for the victim’s dumbness (solve amictum tuum, ut sermonem resolvas […] petram cape et fugit ‘loosen your foot-gear in order to loosen your tongue […] pick up a rock – and he turns in flight!’)31 which is not mentioned in any of his potential sources. Although the ‘rock’ is then used as a metaphor for Christ, it initially appears as a literal object, perhaps referring to its usage as a weapon. No allegorical reading for the loosening of clothing is provided at all.32 Given this, and since these ‘cures’ are not found in the comparatively perfunctory mentions of the speech-stealing wolf in the Naturalis historia and Eclogue IX, it seems likely that Ambrose had another (now lost) source for these explications, or that the superstition circulated orally in fourth century ad Italy, as it appears to have done during Pliny’s time. Indeed, in both the Hexameron and the Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucan, Ambrose states that wolves are ‘said’ (feruntur) to have the power of speech-stealing. The verb fero possesses many meanings (almost forty are listed in the OLD), the most appropriate of which for these instances are ‘to allege, claim’; ‘to relate, tell’; and ‘to mention, spread abroad’ or ‘to speak of’.33 Perhaps Ambrose’s source was word-of-mouth ‘spread abroad’; information which circulated orally. Ambrose’s contemporary, Jerome (fourth to fifth century ad), appears to make an oblique reference to the speech-stealing wolf superstition in his own exegesis, in a discussion of Habakkuk 1.8. Here, Jerome describes how the lupis vespertinis ‘evening wolves’ of this Old Testament passage, the Chaldeans, volaverint prompti, ut comedant carnes verbi Dei ‘“fly eager to eat” the flesh of the word of God’,34 a divergence from his source wherein it is the eagle, rather than the wolf, that ‘fl[ies]’ in ‘haste to eat’. In light of the fact that these animals prey specifically upon carnes verbi Dei ‘the flesh of the word of God’, Jerome’s alteration of his source seems significant. Indeed, it

31



32



33 34

It is unclear why Savage translates amictus as ‘foot-gear’, since this term refers to clothing more broadly; see OLD s.v. amictus, p. 130. The twelfth-century ‘second-family bestiary’ prescribes that the stones be banged together, and the clothing should be removed and trampled on. Allegorically, the stones represent an appeal to the saints to ask for the forgiveness of sins on the speechless victim’s behalf, and the removal of the clothing signifies baptism and rebirth as a person of God; see Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts, The Second-family Bestiary: Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), p. 144. OLD s.v. ferō, pp. 754–7. In Abacuc libri duo, in Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi, Stridonensis presbyteri, opera omnia, ed. by J. -P. Migne, PL, 22–30, 11 vols (Paris: Migne, 1845–6), vi (1845), cols 1273–1338 (col. 1281), and Jerome, Commentary on Habakkuk, in Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets, trans. by Thomas P. Scheck, 2 vols (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016–17), i (2016), pp. 185–243 (p. 192).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts is likely that Jerome had encountered the superstition previously, whether in Ambrose (whose works he is known to have borrowed from),35 or via the word-of-mouth circulation that Ambrose’s Hexameron hints that the superstition may have been enjoying in fourth-century ad Italy. In his youth Jerome had also studied under the tutelage of the Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus (fourth century ad), in whose Commentum Terentii he also could have read of the superstition.36 This commentary is the earliest surviving textual source in which a connection is drawn between the superstition and the lupus in fabula proverb, with Donatus listing the superstition (with reference to the passages from Theocritus’s Idylls and Virgil’s Eclogues) as a possible progenitor of the proverb. Other hypothesised sources, Donatus notes, include the Aesopian fable of ‘The Wolf and the Nurse’,37 as well as a bizarre tale of an incident in which a wolf appeared at the theatre during the performance of a play about Romulus and Remus (whether by coincidence or design is unclear):38 Silentii indictio est in hoc proverbio atque eiusmodi silentii, ut in ipso verbo vel ipsa syllaba conticescat, quia lupum vidisse homines dicimus, qui repente obmutuerunt; quod fere his evenit, quos prior viderit lupus, ut cum cogitatione in qua fuerint etiam verbis et voce careant. Nam sic Theocritus (Id. XIV 22) ‘οὐ φθέγξῃ? λύκον εἶδες’ et Vergilius (Ecl. IX 5354) ‘vox quoque Moerim iam fugit ipsa, lupi Moerim v[idere] p[riores]’. Alii putant ex nutricum fabulis natum pueros ludificantium terrore lupi paulatim capua venientis usque ad limen cubiculi. Nam falsum est quod dicitur intervenisse lupum Naevianae fabulae Alimonio Remi et Romuli, dum in theatro ageretur.39 [This proverb is a declaration of silence; the kind of silence by which a person is struck dumb mid-word or mid-syllable. We say that the wolf

35



36



37



38 39

See N. Adkin, ‘Ambrose and Jerome: The Opening Shot’, Mnemosyne, 4th ser., 46 (1993), 364–76. Chrysanthi Demetriou, ‘Aelius Donatus and His Commentary on Terence’s Comedies’, in The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy, ed. by Michael Fontaine and Adele C. Scafuro (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 782–802 (p. 782). According to this fable, ‘There was a rustic nurse whose baby kept on crying, so she made the following threat: “Be quiet, or else I will throw you to the wolf!” A wolf heard this and took the woman’s words literally, so he sat there, waiting as if dinner were about to be served. At evening time the baby fell asleep, so the wolf went away hungry’; Aesop’s Fables, trans. by Laura Gibbs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 136. For more on these theories, see Abbott, pp. 118–19. Commentum Adelphorum, in Aeli Donati quod fertur commentum Terenti accedunt Eugraphi commentum et Scholia Bembina, ed. by Paul Wessner, 3 vols (Leipzig: Teubner, 1902–8), ii: Donati commentum (1905), pp. 1–185 (p. 111).

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf has seen those who have suddenly become mute, because this often happens to those whom the wolf has seen previously. Thus, in this way, Theocritus (Idylls XIV, 22) says: ‘aren’t you going to speak? Have you seen a wolf?’, and Virgil (Eclogue IX, 53-54) that ‘even voice itself now fails Moeris; the wolves have seen Moeris first’. Others think that the proverb comes from stories told by wet-nurses to frighten boys for their mockeries; stories about the coming of a wolf creeping from Capua to the threshold of the bedroom. It is false that it is said that a wolf took part in the story of Naevius about ‘The Feeding of Remus and Romulus’ while it was performed at the theatre.]

Given their similarities, Donatus’s theory that the proverb originated with the superstition may well be correct. However, his quotations from Theocritus and Virgil should not be taken as suggestions that the proverb came into existence through these texts. Rather, Donatus states that lupum vidisse homines dicimus, qui repente obmutuerunt; quod fere his evenit, quos prior viderit lupus, ut cum cogitatione in qua fuerint etiam verbis et voce careant ‘we say that the wolf has seen those who have suddenly become mute, because this often happens to those whom the wolf has seen previously’, the terms dicimus ‘we say’ and fere ‘often’ appearing to suggest that the belief was commonly known, at least in the circles in which Donatus moved. Donatus’s theory that the superstition was the progenitor of the proverb was favoured by his successors. Fellow grammarian Servius (fourth to fifth century ad), for example, whose commentary on Virgil’s works appears to have been modelled on a similar, now-lost work by Donatus,40 explicitly states that the proverb originated with the superstition in his discussion of Eclogue IX: LUPI MOERIN VIDERE PRIORES hoc etiam physici confirmant, quod voce deseratur is, quem prior viderit lupus: unde etiam proverbium hoc natum est ‘lupus in fabula’, quotiens supervenit ille, de quo loquimur et nobis sui praesentia amputat facultatem loquendi.41 [‘The wolves have seen Moeris first’: natural philosophers also confirm this, that one loses his voice whom a wolf has previously seen, from where this proverb, ‘the wolf in the story’, is also born, since whenever

40



41

See E. K. Rand, ‘Is Donatus’s Commentary on Virgil Lost?’, Classical Quarterly, 10 (1916), 158–64 for more on the lost commentary by Donatus and its relation to Servius. For more on Servius, see Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity, Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 169–97. Servii grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, ed. by George Thilo and Hermann Hagen, 4 vols (Leipzig: Teubner, 1881–1902), iii.i: In Vergilii Bucolica et Georgica commentarii, ed. by George Thilo (1887), p. 116.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts the wolf about whom we speak appears his presence destroys our faculty of speaking.]

It is impossible to determine whether Servius sourced this passage from Donatus’s lost commentary. Nonetheless, given that the Commentum Terentii demonstrates Donatus’s familiarity with and interest in both the superstition and proverb, one might consider it relatively likely that he also discussed the lupus in fabula in this lost text. Although this raises the possibility that Servius simply copied this passage from his model text, that he describes the speech-stealing ability of the wolf as being physici confirmant ‘confirmed by natural philosophers’ may suggest that he had another source. The only ‘naturalist’ who belongs to the textual transmission of the speech-stealing wolf is Pliny, but it is unclear whether Servius knew the Naturalis historia as, although he does mention this text by name in his commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid,42 the information regarding the lynx which he attributes to Pliny is in fact not found in the Naturalis historia.43 Many of these authors were known to Isidore of Seville (sixth to seventh century ad), and could therefore have served as sources for his discussion of wolves in Book XII of his Etymologiae: Lupus Graeca derivatione in linguam nostram transfertur. Lupos enim illi λύκους dicunt: λύκος autem Graece a moribus appellatur, quod rabie rapacitatis quaequae invenerit trucidet. Alii lupos vocatos aiunt quasi leopos, quod quasi leonis, ita sit illi virtus in pedibus; unde et quidquid pede presserit non vivit. Rapax autem bestia et cruoris appetens; de quo rustici aiunt vocem hominem perdere, si eum lupus prior viderit. Vnde et subito tacenti dicitur: ‘Lupus in fabula’. Certe si se praevisum senserit, deponit feritatis audaciam. […] famem diu portant, et post longa ieiunia multum devorant.44 [Wolf (lupus) comes into our language derived from Greek, for they call wolves λύκοϛ; and λύκοϛ is named in Greek from its behavior, because it slaughters whatever it finds in a frenzy of violence […]. Others say wolves are named as if the word were leopos, because their strength, just like the lion’s (leo), is in their paws (pes). Whence whatever they tread

42



43



44

Arthur Frederick Stocker and Albert Hartman Travis, Servianorum in Vergilii carmina commentariorum, Harvard edn, Special Publications of the American Philological Association, 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946– ), iii: Quod in Aeneidos libros III–V explanationes continet, p. 427. William J. O’Neal, Ancient Versus Modern Ways of Making Comparison: Comparatio in Vergil’s ‘Aeneid’ (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 2005), p. 28. Isidori Hispalensis episcopi ‘Etymologiarum’ sive ‘Originum’ libri XX, ed. by W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), ii: Libros XI–XX Continens, XII.ii.23–4.

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf on with their paws does not live. It is a violent beast, eager for gore. Concerning the wolf, country folk say that a person loses his voice if a wolf sees him first. Whence to someone who suddenly falls silent one says, “The wolf in the story.” Certainly if a wolf perceives that he is seen first, he puts aside his bold ferocity. […] They endure hunger for a long time, and devour a large amount after a lengthy fast.]45

Servius’s commentaries were ‘of crucial importance’ to the Etymologiae, with sixty-one ‘uncited borrowings’ alone found in Book XII.46 This same book features regular citations of Pliny’s Naturalis historia and Solinus’s Collectanea, with seventy-nine and forty-five ‘uncited borrowings’ taken from each respectively.47 Isidore also drew upon Ambrose’s Hexameron frequently for this book,48 and the similarities of the above-quoted Hexameron passage to this entry in the Etymologiae, particularly the statement that si se praevisum senserit, deponit feritatis audaciam ‘if a wolf perceives that he is seen first, he puts aside his bold ferocity’ (compare Ambrose’s si se praevisum senserit, deponit ferociam ‘if a wolf perceives that he has been seen first, he loses his fierce character’),49 implies that Isidore was indebted to Ambrose for at least part of his description of the superstition in Book XII. Jerome’s works were also ‘ransacked thoroughly’ by Isidore for Books VI to VIII, suggesting that he may have been familiar with Jerome’s commentary on Habakkuk, while Virgil’s works were cited frequently throughout the Etymologiae.50 Isidore’s Inter caelum also displays ‘several coincidences with the commentaries of Donatus on the comedies of Terence’,51 suggesting that he may also have read the grammarian’s discussion of the lupus in fabula proverb’s origin. Another passage which features the lupus in fabula proverb is found in Book I of the Etymologiae: Aiunt enim rustici vocem hominem perdere, si eum lupus prior viderit. Vnde et subito tacenti dicitur istud proverbium: ‘Lupus in fabula’ ‘peasants say that a person would lose his voice if he saw a wolf in front of him. Thus the proverb, “the wolf in the story,” is said to someone who suddenly The ‘Etymologies’ of Isidore of Seville, trans. by Stephen A. Barney et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 253. 46 Barney et al., eds, Etymologies, pp. 12 and 14 respectively. It has been estimated that ‘some 400 [borrowings] from Servius occur in the whole of the Etymologies’, which ‘may understate the number’; ibid., p. 14. 47 Ibid., p. 14. In particular, Isidore ‘often borrows from [Pliny] at length verbatim’; ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Exameron, ed. by Schenkl, p. 222, and Hexameron, trans. by Savage, p. 244. 50 Barney et al., eds, Etymologies, p. 15. 51 José Carracedo Fraga, ‘Isidore of Seville as a Grammarian’, in A Companion to Isidore of Seville, ed. by Andrew Fear and Jamie Wood, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 87 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 222–44 (p. 231).

45

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts falls silent’.52 Isidore names Donatus as a source on several occasions in this book,53 and indeed, the sentences which precede the above-quoted passage from this book (Paroemia est rebus et temporibus adcommodatum proverbium. Rebus, ut: ‘Contra stimulum calces,’ dum significatur adversis resistendum. Temporibus, ut: ‘Lupus in fabula’ 'Paroemia is a proverb appropriate to the subject or situation. To the subject, as in, “You kick against the pricks,” when resisting adversity is meant. To the situation, as in “the wolf in the story”’) do echo Donatus’s description of the proverb in the Ars major rather closely: paroemia est accommodatum rebus temporibusque proverbium, ut ‘advers um stimulum calces’ et ‘lupus in fabula’54 ‘paroemia is a proverb which accords with the subject or situation, as with “you struggle against the spur” and “the wolf in the story”’. Yet despite the plethora of potential sources from which he may have gleaned his information about the speech-stealing wolf superstition, in both passages Isidore gives an entirely different origin: the rustici, ‘country folk’ or ‘peasants’. This group is mentioned elsewhere in the Etymologiae, mostly in relation to the names given to certain objects by them. Some of these descriptions might ‘give an indication […] of the contemporary’ words used by ‘Spanish peasants’ for parts of the natural world,55 such as Isidore’s discussion of a plant called Elecampane, or inula, which quam rustici alam vocant ‘is called ala by country people’.56 While ala is usually spelt alum, ‘the reflexes in Catalan and Spanish support Isidore’s spelling’, and thus, although ‘there is no way of telling whether this information about rustic usage came to Isidore directly or whether he got it from a book […] it does seem to reflect an Iberian usage that continued into Romance’.57 Perhaps, then, rather than gaining the entirety of his information solely from literary sources, Isidore’s knowledge of the speech-stealing wolf really did ultimately derive from the rustici of Iberia. Isidore, Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, i, I.xxxvii.28, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 63. 53 Barney et al., eds, Etymologies, p. 14. See, for example, Isidore, Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, i, I.vi.1, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 42. However, Federica Ciccolella argues that Isidore ‘relied not on the original text but on commentaries that amplified the authentic Donatan material through more or less arbitrary additions’; Donati Graeci: Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, 32 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 10. 54 Aelius Donatus, Ars grammatica, in Grammatici Latini, ed. by Heinrich Keil, Martin Hertz and Theodor Mommsen, 8 vols (Leipzig: Teubner, 1855–80), iv: Probi, Donati, Servii qui feruntur De arte grammatica libri et Notarum laterculi, ed. by Heinrich Keil and Theodor Mommsen (1864), pp. 353–402 (p. 402). 55 Robert Maltby, ‘Hispanisms in the Language of Isidore of Seville’, in Hispania terris omnibus felicior: Premesse ed esiti di un processo di integrazione. Atti del convegno internazionale. Cividale del Friuli, 27–29 settembre 2001, ed. by Gianpaolo Urso (Pisa: ETS, 2002), pp. 345–55 (p. 350). 56 Isidore, Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, XVII.xi.9, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 357. 57 Maltby, p. 350. 52

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf Indeed, while Pliny, Solinus, Ambrose and Donatus all hint at a popular belief in the superstition none mention a specific group among whom it circulated, and it is difficult to understand why Isidore should state that the rustici specifically believed in the superstition unless he supposed this to be the case. It could be that Isidore was deliberately distancing himself from such superstitious beliefs, as ‘the term rustici carried contemptuous overtones, since it denoted not merely country dwellers but also those who were boorish, vulgar, and without good manners’.58 Yet while the sense in which Isidore uses the term here could be ‘uneducated people’, when he mentions the rustici elsewhere in the Etymologiae he is not disparaging of the language they use, nor the customs they hold. Rather, that Isidore describes the superstition as being held among this group may simply speak to the fact that ‘country people’ will have encountered wolves more frequently than those living in (sub)urban areas, and were therefore the demographic among whom lupine superstitions might spread most readily.59 Isidore’s Etymologiae itself appears to have contributed to the spread of this proverb. Although Archbishop Julian of Toledo (seventh century ad) also attributes belief in the speech-stealing power of wolves to the rustici in a discussion of the proverb in his Ars grammatica,60 in a section of this text which appears shortly before the passage about the proverb, Julian’s ‘general practice’ is ‘to quote Donatus verbatim, then to quote Isidore verbatim, and finally to add examples of his own which are drawn both from Virgil and the Bible’.61 While this does not preclude the possibility that Julian was aware that the superstition circulated among ‘country folk’, given that he was writing at a time and place broadly coeval with Isidore, it is most likely that his attribution of the superstition to rustici ‘country folk’ is simply copied from the Etymologiae. Isidore’s influence also extended beyond medieval Iberia. The Frankish monk and teacher at the abbey school of Fulda, Hrabanus Maurus (eighth to ninth century ad), drew heavily upon the Etymologiae when

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Eric J. Goldberg, In the Manner of the Franks: Hunting, Kingship, and Masculinity in Early Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), p. 167. See ibid., p. 174. Sancti Iuliani Episcopi Toletani: Ars grammatica, poetica et rhetorica e membranis antiquis Bibliothecae Vaticano-Palatinae, ed. by Francisci, Cardinal de Lorenzana (Rome: Fulgoni, 1797), p. xlvii. Peter Haidu, Aesthetic Distance in Chretien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in ‘Cliges’ and ‘Perceval’ (Geneva: Droz, 1968), p. 19 n.34. Julian also knew some of Jerome and Ambrose’s works, which he drew on for his Prognosticum futuri saeculi; Tommaso Stancati, ed. and trans., Julian of Toledo: ‘Prognosticum futuri saeculi’, Foreknowledge of the World to Come, Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation, 63 (New York, NY: Newman Press, 2010), p. 207.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts composing his De universo, to the extent that ‘large sections’ of this text have been described as ‘nothing other than a mystical commentary on’ Isidore’s work.62 Accordingly, the first part of Hrabanus’s passage on the wolf follows the entry from Book XII of the Etymologiae closely and, like Isidore, he notes that it is rustici ‘country folk’ who believe in the speech-stealing power of wolves.63 Again, as with the passage from Julian’s Ars grammatica, it is not impossible that this is an accurate attribution of belief in the superstition to ‘country folk’ on the Continent. However, given that the first part of Hrabanus’s discussion of wolves is essentially a near-identical replication of Isidore’s entry on wolves from the Etymologiae (Hrabanus’s own contribution comes afterwards, in a separate discussion of the wolf’s biblical roles which, unlike Ambrose, he does not relate to the superstition), this statement is almost certainly only a near-verbatim transcription from his source. While Hrabanus borrowed from Book XII of the Etymologiae, the Irishborn monk and founder of the abbey school at Saint-Germain d’Auxerre, Murethach, appears to have borrowed from Book I of Isidore’s work in his commentary on Donatus’s Ars grammatica. Within a passage whose opening sentence closely follows the beginning of Isidore’s description of the proverb in Book I of the Etymologiae, Murethach likewise attributes the existence of the proverb to the superstitious belief that lupus facit tacere rusticos ‘the wolf makes country folk fall silent’.64 As with Hrabanus’s attribution of belief in the superstition to the rustici, it seems Ian N. Wood, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, in Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 531–42 (p. 537). As well as Isidore’s Etymologiae, Hrabanus was influenced by Pliny’s Naturalis historia (Lisa Verner, The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 12), and he ‘held […] Jerome […] in high esteem’; William Schipper, ‘Hrabanus Maurus’, in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: A Trial Version, ed. by Frederick M. Biggs, Thomas D. Hill and Paul E. Szarmach, Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 74 (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1990), pp. 130–3 (p. 131). It also seems likely that Hrabanus knew Donatus’s commentary on Terence, since it was familiar to one of his students, Lupus of Ferrières, whose ‘acquaintance with Donatus dates back to his stay in Fulda, where he was a student under Rhabanus Maurus’; Charles H. Beeson, ‘The Text Tradition of Donatus’ Commentary on Terence’, Classical Philology, 17 (1922), 283–305 (pp. 284–5). 63 See Hrabanus Maurus, De universo, in B. Rabani Mauri, Fuldensis Abbatis et Moguntini Archiepiscopi, opera omnia, PL, 107–12, 6 vols (Paris: Migne, 1851–2), v (1852), cols 9–614 (col. 223), and Hrabanus Maurus, De universo: The Peculiar Properties of Words and Their Mystical Significance, trans. by Priscilla Throop, 2 vols (Charlotte, VT: MedievalMS, 2009), ii: Books I–XI, 239–40. 64 Murethach, In Donati artem maiorem, ed. by Louis Holtz, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977), p. 248.

62

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf likely that Murethach was not speaking from personal knowledge, but simply adapting from his source, especially given that throughout his commentary ‘a certain […] repetitive scholasticism seem[s] to predominate’, as ‘compared to the instances of original exposition’.65 A second Irish-born scholar, Sedulius Scottus, also travelled to the Continent in the ninth-century ad, in search of refuge after the Danes invaded his home country. Like Murethach, Sedulius composed a commentary upon Donatus’s Ars grammatica and he too may have borrowed from Isidore’s Etymologiae for his explication of the lupus in fabula proverb.66 Yet instead of attributing the superstition to the rustici, Sedulius appeals to a perhaps more authoritative source: Physici dicunt, quia si lupus prior pastorem viderit, eum obmutescere facit, quatinus ipse clamare non possit67 ‘Natural philosophers say that if the wolf sees the shepherd first he will be made dumb, so that he will not be able to cry out’. Sources other than Isidore’s Etymologiae may account for this insertion, as Sedulius may have borrowed from Servius’s commentary on Virgil (‘the preeminent Latin poet’ for Sedulius),68 which he potentially knew fairly intimately, given that he may be the scribe of a manuscript which contains a copy of this text.69 Alternatively, the physici described here could refer to earlier authorities on natural history, such as Isidore and Pliny, whose Etymologiae and the Naturalis historia were ‘especially popular’ in early medieval Ireland,70 or, as is perhaps less likely, to contemporary

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Edoardo Vineis and Alfonso Maierù, ‘Medieval Linguistics’, in History of Linguistics, ed. by Giulio C. Lepschy and Anna Morpurgo Davies, 5 vols (London: Longman, 1994– ), ii: Classical and Medieval Linguistics (1994), pp. 134–346 (pp. 232–3 n.195). Charles M. Atkinson argues that ‘the influence of […] Isidore of Seville is […] clearly manifested in the commentaries on Donatus by Murethach of Auxerre and, following him, those of Sedulius Scottus and the Lorsch grammar [the Ars Laureshamensis]’; The Critical Nexus: Tone-System, Mode, and Notation in Early Medieval Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 56. Sedulius Scottus, In Donati artem maiorem, ed. by Bengt Löfstedt, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 40B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1977), p. 388. Michael C. Sloan, The Harmonious Organ of Sedulius Scottus: Introduction to His ‘Collectaneum in Apostolum’ and Translation of Its Prologue and Commentaries on Galatians and Ephesians, Millennium Studies, 39 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), p. 14. John Joseph Hannan Savage, ‘The Manuscripts of Servius’s Commentary on Virgil’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 45 (1934), 157–204 (p. 191). Sedulius’s name is mentioned on 225 occasions in the marginal notes found in this manuscript; ibid. For more on the influence of Servius’s Virgil commentary on Sedulius, as well as the lost Donatus commentary upon which it was modelled, which may still have been ‘extant in the ninth century’ (Sloan, p. 15), see Sloan, pp. 13–17. Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in The Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 6.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts natural philosophers in Ireland or France. Indeed, like Isidore, Sedulius notes that the proverb was said because of (hinc) the superstition that wolves can steal a person’s speech. Sedulius’s knowledge of the proverb itself, however, appears to have come from other quarters; he states that cum quilibet nostro sermoni inpedimentum fecerit ita ut nos subito taceamus dicere prouerbialiter soliti sumus lupus in fabula71 ‘when anyone makes an impediment to our conversation in this way, so that we are suddenly silent, we are accustomed to say, proverbially, “the wolf in the story”’. This suggests that usage of the phrase was commonplace, just as the maxim ‘speak of the devil [and he will appear]’ is common in the parlance of modern English speakers. The matter of Sedulius’s source(s) is made more complicated by the fact that both his and Murethach’s commentaries on Donatus’s Ars grammatici (as well as the Insular Ars Laureshamensis, in which the proverb is also mentioned)72 are believed to derive from a common source written in Ireland c. ad 800. This common source is thought to have been ‘extensively used for instruction in the Irish schools in the early decade of the ninth century’, after which point it ‘seems to have been taken to the Continent’ by Murethach and Sedulius.73 Since this common source is now lost, it is impossible to gauge which material from these three texts is derived from it, and therefore whether Sedulius and Murethach’s references to realworld belief in the superstition among the rustici ‘country folk’ originate with this earlier text. Nonetheless, the existence of an Insular common source does attest to knowledge of both superstition and proverb in early medieval Ireland, at least in textual – if not oral – form. Like Murethach, Remigius of Auxerre (ninth to tenth century ad) taught at the Abbey of Saint-Germain en Auxerre, and he too composed a commentary on Donatus’s Ars grammatica. It seems likely that when composing his commentary Remigius was influenced by the work of his predecessor since, ‘for some generations’, Murethach’s commentary

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Sedulius also borrowed from Ambrose’s Hexameron for his Collectaneum miscellaneum; John Marenbon, ‘Platonism – A Doxographic Approach: The Early Middle Ages’, in The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: A Doxographic Approach, ed. by Stephen Gersh and Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 67–89 (p. 73 n.22). He likewise drew on Jerome’s works for this text, which also ‘includes excerpts from […] Terence’; Luned Mair Davies, ‘Sedulius Scottus’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by David Cannadine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) . In Donati artem maiorem, ed. by Löfstedt, p. 388. See pp. 56–7 n.10 above. Martin McNamara, ‘Early Irish Exegesis. Some Facts and Tendencies’, Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association, 8 (1984), 57–96 (pp. 61–2).

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf ‘remained as the manual used by the Auxerre School’.74 Indeed, like Murethach, Remigius explains the meaning of the proverb with reference to the superstition.75 However, aside from Murethach’s commentary Remigius may also have had other sources, including Sedulius’s In Donati artem maiorem76 and Isidore’s Etymologiae. Throughout his works Remigius used the latter ‘for most of his etymologies and scientific knowledge’,77 including for information regarding animals, as in his commentary on Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae.78 In this text Remigius also named Virgil, Pliny, Solinus, Servius, and Jerome as his sources, and although ‘Pliny and Solinus were cited, wrongly, as authorities for statements on natural history’, and though some of the five citations of Jerome ‘do not seem to have any source in Jerome at all’,79 the fourteen citations of Virgil are ‘verbally accurate and indicate a direct and deep knowledge of [him]’, and the usage of Servius was ‘extensive[]’,80 suggesting that Remigius is perhaps most likely to have read of the speech-stealing wolf superstition and the lupus in fabula proverb in the works of one of these latter authors. A late ninth-century work, the Scholia Bernensia, sees the final entry in the textual history of the speech-stealing wolf superstition. This text comprises a collection of marginal commentaries to Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics, and features a brief discussion of Moeris’s lost voice in Eclogue IX: Hic rusticam fabulam tangit, quia vox pastoris obruitur si prius eum lupus viderit quam ille lupum.81 [This touches on a folk story, that the voice of the shepherd is overwhelmed if the wolf sees him before he sees the wolf.]

The Scholia Bernensia are found in several manuscripts containing Virgil’s Eclogues and Georgics which appear to have been copied at French centres; the text quoted here is from Bern Burgerbibliothek, MS 172, which was

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Vineis and Maierù, pp. 232–3 n.195. Remigius of Auxerre, Commentum Einsidlense in Donati barbarismum, in Grammatici Latini, ed. by Keil, viii: Supplementum continens anecdota Helvetica quae ad grammaticam Latinam spectant ex bibliothecis Turicensi einsidlensi bernensi, ed. by Hermann Hagan (1870), pp. 267–74 (p. 273). John J. Contreni, ‘Sedulius on Grammar’, Peritia, 4 (1985), 387–90 (p. 388). Henry Ansgar Kelly, Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 18 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 50. Diane K. Bolton, ‘Remigian Commentaries on the “Consolation of Philosophy” and Their Sources’, Traditio, 33 (1977), 381–94 (p. 388). Ibid., pp. 382, 384, and 385 respectively. Ibid., p. 382. ‘Scholia Bernensia: An Edition of the Scholia on the Eclogues of Virgil in Bern Burgerbibliothek Manuscript 172’, ed. by David Charles Campbell Daintree (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Tasmania, 1993), p. 283.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts produced at Auxerre or Fleury.82 However, glosses in Old Irish are found in these manuscripts which, ‘together with the evidence of abbreviations and orthography, suggest that the origins of the original commentary’ from which they derive ‘lay in an Irish speech community’ on the continent or in Ireland itself, and that they may have been compiled specifically by seventh- to eighth-century ad Abbot of Iona, Adamnán.83 Adamnán – or an unidentified Irish compiler of the glosses – appears to have drawn from Isidore’s Etymologiae, and from Servius’s (and perhaps also Donatus’s) commentary on Virgil.84 Thus, the description that this passage from Eclogue IX is a rusticam fabulam ‘folk story’ may be drawn from Isidore, although it is curious that the only other author to specify the wolf’s victim as a pastor ‘shepherd’ is Sedulius. It is also unclear whether the phrase rusticam fabulam refers to a ‘folk story’ contemporary with Virgil, or one that was still known in the seventh to ninth centuries. However, although it is unclear whether the speech-stealing wolf superstition circulated as oral folk stories in early medieval Ireland, this text and the Insular commentaries on Donatus’s Ars grammatica do provide evidence that the superstition was known in textual form here at this time.

The lupus in fabula in Early Medieval England Given that the superstition was known in Ireland, it would be a remarkable idiosyncrasy of fate if the legendary speech-stealing power of wolves was entirely unknown in early medieval England. As Bede describes in his Ecclesiastica historia, many English scholars travelled to Ireland ‘in search of learning’,85 where they found that ‘Irish teachers were most hospitable in providing […] “books for study”’.86 This may have included the texts in which the speech-stealing wolf appears, many of which were known in Ireland fairly early on. Among the earliest copies of the Etymologiae to leave Spain were manuscripts which travelled to Ireland, for example, while ‘the earliest manuscript fragments of the Etymologies’, found in ‘the monastery of St. Gall, a foundation in present-day Switzerland with Irish 84 85 82 83



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Daintree, ed., pp. 25–6. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., pp. 79–80 and 85–6. J. N. Hillgarth, ‘Ireland and Spain in the Seventh Century’, Peritia, 3 (1984), 1–16 (p. 16). Rosalind Love, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, in Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, ed. by Barnard et al., i: 606–633, ed. by Gameson, pp. 606–32 (pp. 610–11), translating the phrase libros quoque ad legendum; see Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 312–3.

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf connections going back to the early seventh century’, are ‘written in an Irish scribal hand, perhaps as early as the mid-seventh century’.87 Soon after it arrived in Ireland, the Etymologiae began to be used by scholars in grammatical works, exegesis, and computistical texts composed by ‘at least ten separate authors’.88 ‘A version of’ Julian’s Ars grammatica may also have been known in Ireland,89 while Pliny’s Naturalis historia, Solinus’s Collectanea, and Servius’s commentary on Virgil were all ‘known to the Irish before ca. 800’.90 Servius’s commentary has particularly strong Insular connections since one of the versions in which it survives, an interpolated version known as the Servius Danielis, might be the work of an Irish compiler who had completed their work at the latest by the middle of the ninth century, though possibly as early as the seventh century.91 This compiler themselves may have been in possession of ‘an extraordinary collection of antique authors and scholastic sources’,92 seemingly including Donatus’s commentary on Terence.93 Some of the manuscripts utilised by English scholars during their visits to Ireland ‘surely made their way back to England’, where they found new homes in abbey libraries such as that of Wearmouth-Jarrow.94 Indeed, ‘it is certainly possible that Bede’s knowledge of […] Isidorian works came from Irish hands as did (more certainly) his knowledge of […] Pliny’s Natural History’, while ‘Aldhelm’s early knowledge of the Etymologies and other Isidorian works can almost certainly be traced to the Irish’.95 Some of the Irish works themselves may also have made their way to England; an Ars Sedulii referring to ‘one of the grammatical commentaries by Sedulius’, which could therefore be his commentary on Donatus, is also mentioned in an eleventh-century booklist which possibly relates to the library at



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Barney et al., eds, Etymologies, p. 24. See also Claudia Di Sciacca, Finding the Right Words: Isidore’s ‘Synonyma’ in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 58–9. Hillgarth, pp. 8–10, and see also Michael Herren, ‘On the Earliest Irish Acquaintance with Isidore of Seville’, in Visigothic Spain: New Approaches, ed. by Edward James (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 243–50, and Di Sciacca, pp. 38–47. Hillgarth, p. 11. Michael Herren, ‘Classical and Secular Learning among the Irish before the Carolingian Renaissance’, Florilegium, 3 (1981), 118–57 (pp. 138–40). Brent Miles, Heroic Saga and Classical Epic in Medieval Ireland, Studies in Celtic History, 30 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011), pp. 25–7. See ibid., pp. 25–33 for more on the Servius Danielis and the possibility that it was compiled in Ireland. Ibid., p. 26. Rand, p. 160. Love, p. 611. Herren, ‘Classical and Secular Learning’, p. 131.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Worcester.96 Many of the texts in which the superstition appears were also copied and read in England, as can be ascertained by evidence from manuscripts, booklists, and citations in early medieval English texts. The evidence from these sources, which date from the fifth to eleventh centuries and which demonstrate usage of these texts throughout the country, from Bury St Edmunds to Canterbury, Winchester, Ramsey, Durham, and Wearmouth-Jarrow, among other centres, suggests that the speech-stealing wolf circulated widely throughout early medieval England between the pages of these manuscripts.97 One exception is the earliest text in which the superstition appears, Theocritus’s Idylls, which is not attested in any manuscripts written in early medieval England.98 Virgil’s Eclogues, however, the second-eldest text, is found in a tenth- or eleventh-century manuscript which was compiled at Worcester,99 and is also mentioned in an eleventh-century inventory of books that appears to be from the same location.100 A thirteenth-century catalogue from Glastonbury also mentions ‘a copy of Vergil’, which Lapidge assumes to be an English manuscript ‘of the tenth century or later’.101 Earlier, Alcuin named Virgil in his list of books at York,102 and while he did not specify which works were present, it has been noticed that his Conveniunt subito cuncti features ‘numerous phrases

Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 140–3. 97 It is also likely that the proverb was known in early medieval England. Terence’s Adelphi is found in one manuscript which may date to the eleventh century (Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 669.6), and it was cited by Aldhelm and Abbo (Lapidge, Library, p. 334), but it was the grammatical texts which appear to have been particularly well-known. Extracts of Pompeius’s Commentum artis Donati appear in an eighth-century manuscript (Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 933), and ‘quotations and echoes’ of this work ‘appear in the works of Aldhelm, Tatwine, Bede, and Alcuin’; Leslie Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2011), p. 240. Donatus’s Ars major is found in a tenth-century manuscript, with an excerpt found in another which dates to the tenth or eleventh century (Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 321 and 829 respectively). It is also ‘mentioned in the booklist of the grammarian Æthelstan’, and it is ‘quoted by Theodore and Hadrian, Aldhelm, Tatwine, Boniface, Bede, Alcuin, Abbo, and Byrhtferth’; Lockett, p. 240. 98 Nonetheless, as Lapidge notes, ‘the classical authors unrepresented in surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were not necessarily missing from Anglo-Saxon libraries’; Library, p. 67. 99 Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 919. 100 Lapidge, Library, pp. 141–2. 101 Ibid., p. 73. 102 Mary Garrison, ‘The Library of Alcuin’s York’, in Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, ed. by Barnard et al., i, pp. 633–64 (p. 658).

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf drawn from Virgil’s Eclogues’.103 Virgil’s works were also ‘often quoted by Bede’,104 who ‘had seemingly internalized every aspect of Vergil’s poetic technique’,105 and it ‘seems highly likely’ that Wearmouth-Jarrow housed a copy of the Eclogues.106 As well as Bede, the Eclogues were known to Aldhelm, Abbo, Wulfstan Cantor, and Byrhtferth,107 and were used for the glosses of a revised version of Remigius’s commentary on Boethius (found in three tenth- and eleventh-century manuscripts composed in England),108 which Diane K. Bolton contends ‘were written with the resources of a library close at hand, the glossator copying verbatim from his source’.109 A ninth-century Lotharingian manuscript which reached England by the tenth or eleventh century contains a collection of excerpts of Pliny’s Naturalis historia known as the Excerpta Eboracensia, as does a tenth- or eleventh-century manuscript written at Fleury which reached England by the eleventh century.110 Excerpts of the Naturalis historia are also found in two manuscripts written in England which date to the eighth and eleventh centuries.111 Given its provenance, the earlier of the two provides ‘evidence in Northumbria for serious interest in the Naturalis historia well before the Carolingian revival’,112 as is also attested by Bede’s numerous Douglas Dales, Alcuin: Theology and Thought (Cambridge: Clarke, 2013), p. 231. Roger Ray, ‘Bede and Cicero’, ASE, 16 (1987), 1–15 (p. 5). 105 Lapidge, Library, p. 106. 106 Love, p. 629. For details of Bede’s citations of Virgil, see Lapidge, Library, pp. 226–7. 107 Ibid., p. 336. For details of Aldhelm’s, Abbo’s, Wulfstan Cantor’s, and Byrhtferth’s citations of Virgil, see ibid., pp. 188–90, 246–7, 250 and 273–4 respectively. 108 Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 23, 193, and 887. 109 ‘Remigian Commentaries’, pp. 389–90. 110 Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 423 and 428.4 respectively. This collection comprises excerpts from the Naturalis historia only on the subject of astronomy, however, and it may not have been compiled first-hand from a copy of Pliny given that ‘a close similarity exists between these excerpts and citations from Pliny in Bede’s De rerum natura’, suggesting that it may instead have ‘been taken from a compilation of texts on astronomy based partly on Pliny and greatly influenced by Bede’; Chauncey E. Finch, ‘Excerpts from Pliny’s Natural History in Codices Reg. Lat. 309 and Vat. Lat. 645’, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 96 (1965), 107–17 (p. 107). 111 Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 373 and 838. This latter manuscript contains only Books II–VI, however, while the speech-stealing wolf features in Book VIII. 112 Mary Garrison, ‘An Insular Copy of Pliny’s Naturalis historia (Leiden VLF 4 fols 4–33)’, in Writing in Context: Insular Manuscript Culture 500–1200, ed. by Erik Kwakkel (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2013), pp. 67–125 (p. 68). This manuscript is ‘textually affiliated’ with another ‘eighth- and ninth-century Pliny excerpt collection[] […] of Northumbrian origin’, the earliest witness of which ‘occurs in the same section of its composite codex as the famous Leiden Glossary which preserves traces of the instruction of the renowned Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian’; ibid., p. 75. 103 104

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts quotations of this work, which ‘demonstrat[e] [his] familiarity with a total of eighteen books of the Naturalis historia’, including Book VIII, in which the speech-stealing wolf appears.113 Alcuin lists ‘Plinius’ in his York poem (‘presumably Pliny the Elder’), and though he does not specify which text(s) were present, the Naturalis historia seems likely to have been among them,114 especially since in Alcuin’s description of ‘the York programme of study […] all of the topics listed’, including ‘the natures of […] wild beasts’, are discussed in this text.115 The Naturalis historia was also cited by Aldhelm, Abbo, and Byrhtferth,116 while Solinus’s Collectanea, despite only surviving in two eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscripts written in England (one of which is fragmentary),117 is known to have circulated earlier as ‘citations in […] Aldhelm and Bede attest’.118 Ambrose’s Hexameron is found in three manuscripts written in England which date from the tenth to twelfth centuries,119 as well as one ninth-century manuscript written in France but with English provenance.120 This text is also referenced in the Sæwold and Peterborough booklists,121 and it was used by Aldhelm, Bede, and Ælfric,122 as well as Byrhtferth.123 It may also have served ‘as a source for the Old English Phoenix’, as well as for The Wanderer.124 Fragments of Ambrose’s Expositio de psalmo CXVIII appear on four flyleaves written in Italy in the ninth century and which reached England by the eleventh century, and excerpts are found in one

Ibid., pp. 96–7. See Lapidge, Library, pp. 222–3 for details. Lapidge, Library, p. 230. 115 Garrison, ‘Pliny’s Naturalis historia’, p. 98. 116 Lapidge, Library, p. 325. For details of Aldhelm’s, Abbo’s, and Byrhtferth’s citations of Pliny, see ibid., pp. 184, 246, and 272 respectively. 117 Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 35 and 439. The latter may have been composed in France, however. 118 Sinéad O’Sullivan, Early Medieval Glosses on Prudentius’ ‘Psychomachia’: The Weitz Tradition, Mittellateinische Studien und Texte, 31 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 117. For details of Aldhelm and Bede’s citations of Solinus, see Lapidge, Library, pp. 187 and 225 respectively. 119 Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 20, 194, and 778. See also Dabney Anderson Bankert, Jessica Wegmann and Charles D. Wright, Ambrose in Anglo-Saxon England with Pseudo-Ambrose and Ambrosiaster, Old English Newsletter Subsidia, 25 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), p. 18. 120 Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 61.5. 121 Lapidge, Library, pp. 136–9 and 143–7 respectively. The mention of Ambrose’s Hexameron in the former refers to Arras, Bibliothèque municipale [Médiathèque], 346 (867) (no. 778 in Gneuss and Lapidge); Lapidge, Library, p. 138. 122 Bankert, Wegmann and Wright, pp. 18–21. See Lapidge, Library, pp. 194–5 for details of Bede’s citations of Ambrose, and p. 252 for Ælfric’s. 123 Lapidge, Library, pp. 279–80. See ibid., p. 267 for details. 124 Bankert, Wegmann and Wright, pp. 21–2. 113 114

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscript written in England.125 Though this manuscript evidence is late, it is possible that this text circulated earlier, as it may have been used by Bede.126 The manuscript evidence for the Expositio Lucan is likewise late; it is found in full in one eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscript written in England,127 with excerpts featuring in a ninth-century manuscript composed in Saint-Amand that appears to have reached England by 1100.128 However, that this text circulated earlier than the extant manuscript evidence is attested by the fact that Bede made ‘extensive use of Ambrose’s work when he wrote his own commentary’ on this Gospel.129 It has also been hypothesised that the Expositio Lucan served as a source for the authors of Blickling Homily III and The Dream of the Rood.130 As well as this, both Ambrose and Jerome are mentioned in Alcuin’s York poem, though the text(s) present are not specified.131 Jerome’s Commentarii in Prophetas Minores is found in two eleventh-century and two eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscripts,132 though citations by Bede and Aldhelm prove that this work circulated earlier.133 Unlike these well-attested works from the earlier transmission of the speech-stealing wolf superstition, Donatus’s Commentum Terentii was ‘a rare text through almost the whole of the Middle Ages, only leaving the shadows after 1433’,134 and is thus not found in any manuscripts written in early medieval England. However, it has been hypothesised that the version of the commentary which survives today ‘is a compilation […] of marginalia on Terence from at least two (probably late antique) manuscripts’,135 and although it may have been known only in this form ‘until the late eighth or ninth century’, at this time ‘portions of it were formed, perhaps at an insular center of learning, into the present independent See Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 175.1 and 653.2 respectively. Bankert, Wegmann and Wright, p. 32. 127 Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 162. 128 Bankert, Wegmann and Wright, p. 32; see also Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 516. 129 Bankert, Wegmann and Wright, p. 34. 130 Ibid. 131 Garrison, ‘Alcuin’s York’, p. 658. 132 Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 161 and 228; and 11.8 and 620.3 respectively. 133 Lapidge, Library, pp. 216 and 181 respectively. 134 Benjamin Victor, ‘History of the Text and Scholia’, in A Companion to Terence, ed. by Antony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 343–62 (p. 360). ‘There is no complete manuscript earlier than the Renaissance and only two partial ones before that’ (James E. G. Zetzel, Critics, Compilers, and Commentators: An Introduction to Roman Philology, 200 BCE– 800 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 254), the earliest being an eleventh-century manuscript which may have been written at Fleury; M. D. Reeve and R. H. Rouse, ‘New Light on the Transmission of Donatus’s “Commentum Terentii”’, Viator, 9 (1978), 235–50 (p. 239). 135 Zetzel, p. 254. 125 126

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts volume’.136 Eleventh-century glosses ‘derived partly from Servius’,137 meanwhile, are found in the tenth- or eleventh-century manuscript containing Virgil’s Eclogues mentioned above.138 Servius’s commentary on Virgil was cited by Aldhelm and Byrhtferth,139 and it was drawn upon by the glossators of the revised version of Remigius’s commentary on Boethius,140 and possibly by the translator who rendered Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae into the vernacular.141 A fragment from the Servius Danielis is also found in an early eighth-century manuscript, though it is from the commentary on the Aeneid rather than the Eclogues.142 Additionally, Servius is named in Alcuin’s York poem, but while this is ‘possibly a genuine work of Servius’, it is ‘equally possibly one of the several grammatical treatises which travelled under the name of Sergius’.143 Julian of Toledo’s Ars grammatica, meanwhile, ‘was very early on known to the Anglo-Saxons’.144 Despite not surviving in any manuscripts from early medieval England, this text was quoted by Bede,145 known to Aldhelm,146 and possibly used by Byrhtferth,147 and it has been hypothesized that ‘the three oldest MSS […] all have Irish or Anglo-Saxon connections’.148 Hrabanus’s De universo is likewise unattested in the surviving manuscript evidence from early medieval England, though it does appear in several manuscripts from the twelfth century and later.149 Hrabanus is also mentioned in the Ælfwold booklist (though the text(s) present are not specified), and Wulfstan may have borrowed from his works.150

Rouse and Reeve, p. 247. Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 919. 138 See p. 76 above. 139 Lapidge, Library, p. 332. See ibid., pp. 186 and 273 for details of Aldhelm’s and Byrhtferth’s citations respectively. 140 Bolton, p. 393. 141 Andrew Galloway, ‘Classical Inheritance I: From Greco‐Roman Culture to Latin Western Christendom and England Before 1066’, in The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain, ed. by Siân Echard and Robert Rouse (Oxford: Wiley, 2017) , pp. 1–13 (p. 11). 142 Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 849.6. 143 Lapidge, Library, p. 231. 144 Hillgarth, p. 11. 145 Lockett, p. 240. See Lapidge, Library, p. 218 for details. 146 Di Sciacca, p. 47. 147 Gabriele Knappe, ‘Classical Rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE, 27 (1998), 5–29 (pp. 18–19). 148 Hillgarth, p. 11 n.5. 149 See William Schipper, ‘Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis: A Provisional Check List of Manuscripts’, Manuscripta, 33 (1989), 109–18. 150 Schipper, ‘Hrabanus Maurus’, p. 131. 136 137

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf Although it is possible that the people living in early medieval England who had access to these manuscripts may have learned of the speech-stealing wolf superstition from the texts within, it is most likely that those who learnt of the lupus in fabula from textual sources did so via Isidore’s Etymologiae. Of all the texts in which the superstition appears this was by far the most well-known in early medieval England, ‘surviv[ing] in over two dozen MSS used in Anglo-Saxon England or in the region of the Anglo-Saxon missions in Germany’.151 The oldest is a French manuscript composed c. 800, which contains an epitome of the Etymologiae known as De diversis rebus. Yet while this text itself was copied in France, the exemplar from which the compiler worked was Insular, and contained Old English glosses that ‘were apparently written by a Mercian scholar at sometime in the earlier eighth century’, which the later compiler then incorporated into their own text.152 This exemplar appears to have comprised a complete copy of the Etymologiae as, ‘on occasion’, the compiler ‘was able to bring together entries widely separated in the original’.153 Along with citations found in the works of Bede, Aldhelm, and Cathwulf,154 with ‘quotations and echoes’ of Book I specifically ‘appear[ing] in the works of Aldhelm, Tatwine, Boniface, [and] Bede’,155 this manuscript attests to the fact that the Etymologiae was read and used in early medieval England fairly soon after its composition. The ‘school of Theodore and Hadrian’ at Canterbury also ‘appears to have been a centre in which

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153 154



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Lockett, p. 240. Although Gneuss and Lapidge list only twenty-two manuscripts containing the Etymologiae, while Lockett mentions more than twenty-four, the discrepancy in numbers is attributable to the fact that Gneuss and Lapidge’s Handlist does not include the manuscripts used by English communities on the continent to which Lockett refers here. Full copies of the Etymologiae are found in one eleventh-century manuscript written in England, one eleventh- or twelfth-century manuscript possibly composed in Normandy, and one ninth-century manuscript composed in France which arrived in England by the tenth century; Gneuss and Lapidge, nos 469, 561, and 899 respectively. Fifteen manuscripts composed in England or with English provenance, ranging from the eighth to the eleventh or twelfth centuries, contain excerpts; see ibid., nos 173, 176, 185, 188.8, 311, 391, 460, 497.2, 498.1, 682, 690, 749, 784.5, 808.0, and 919.3. Two manuscripts written in England, one eighth-century and one eighth- or ninth-century, contain fragments, as do a seventh- or eighth-century manuscript composed in Ireland, and a ninth-century manuscript composed in France; ibid., nos 821 and 885; 524.4; and 154.5 respectively. Michael Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature, 600–899 (London: Hambledon Press, 1996), pp. 189–90. Ibid., p. 193. Di Sciacca, pp. 48–51. See Lapidge, Library, pp. 181 and 212–15 for details of Aldhelm’s and Bede’s citations of Isidore respectively. Lockett, p. 240.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Isidore’s works were circulating’ since, in the Canterbury Biblical Commentaries, ‘the Etymologiae are quoted verbatim and at length on at least two occasions’.156 Alcuin also ‘repeatedly expressed special admiration for Isidore’,157 and though he did not name Isidore in his York poem, this might be due only to ‘exigencies of metre [which] compelled Alcuin to omit the names of writers’ who, nonetheless, ‘were certainly represented to some extent in the library’.158 Later, ‘some of Isidore’s works may have been available at King Alfred’s court’,159 while Ælfric drew on the Etymologiae for several of his own works.160 Wulfstan Cantor’s Vita S. Æthelwoldi and Lantfred’s Translatio et miracula S. Swithuni also demonstrate that both authors were ‘familiar[] with Isidore’s works’, including the Etymologiae,161 while ‘quotations and echoes’ of Book I specifically are found in the works of Abbo and Byrhtferth.162 Isidore’s works also served as a ‘primary source’ for the glossators of the revised version of Remigius’s commentary on Boethius, with the Etymologiae in particular serving as a source of natural lore.163 All of this evidence suggests that Isidore ‘exerted a significant influence on a variety of fields of Anglo-Saxon literary culture, ranging from grammar to computus, from history to homiletics and hagiography, from exegesis to charters’, as well, perhaps, as poetic texts such as The Order of the World.164 Certainly, then, there was great potential for the speech-stealing wolf superstition to have become relatively widely known, especially since wolves are a common feature of Anglo-Latin and early medieval English literature in both ecclesiastical and secular contexts. Indeed, Brian O’Camb has demonstrated that the wolf lore contained within Maxims I shows ‘a remarkable degree of rhetorical and thematic overlap’ with that of Isidore’s entry in Book XII of the Etymologiae, suggesting that this text

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159 160



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Di Sciacca, p. 47. See Lapidge, Library, pp. 177–8 for details. Luitpold Wallach, Alcuin and Charlemagne: Studies in Carolingian History and Literature, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, 32 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959), p. 238 n.23. M. L. W. Laistner, ‘The Library of the Venerable Bede’, in Bede: His Life, Times, and Writings: Essays in Commemoration of the Twelfth Centenary of His Death, ed. by A. Hamilton Thompson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), pp. 237–66 (p. 237). Di Sciacca, p. 52. See Lapidge, Library, p. 261 for details of Ælfric’s citations of Isidore. See also pp. 142–3 below. Di Sciacca, pp. 52–3. See Lapidge, Library, p. 241 for details of Lantfred’s citations of Isidore. Lockett, p. 240. See Lapidge, Library, p. 271 for details of Byrhtferth’s citations of Isidore, and p. 245 for Abbo’s. Bolton, p. 392. Di Sciacca, pp. 55 and 53 respectively.

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf could have been the poet’s source:165 both share grammatical features,166 as well as references to the wolf’s tendency to slaughter167 and its violent nature and insatiable hunger.168 This poet, at least, appears to have taken a particular interest in Isidore’s wolf lore; perhaps other writers composing in early medieval England were equally captivated by the wolf lore of the Etymologiae, or by the speech-stealing wolf superstition detailed in the works of both Isidore and his predecessors and successors. In any case, the evidence of the widespread circulation enjoyed by the texts in which the superstition is found suggests that the lupus in fabula could have been relatively well-known in early medieval England, at least among the literate. If the superstition also circulated orally – as, indeed, it appears it may have done in ancient Rome and possibly medieval Iberia – it may have been known to a wider and potentially more diverse audience.

Old English and Anglo-Latin ‘Wolves in the Story’ As well as Abbo of Fleury and Ælfric’s passiones Eadmundi, which are treated separately in chapter four, a passage from an Old English charm contains echoes of the speech-stealing wolf superstition, suggesting that the Maxims I poet was not the only writer in early medieval England familiar with this wolf lore. In this charm, a wolf-hair amulet appears to serve as a means by which its owner may ‘see’ the wolf before he is seen by it:169



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‘Isidorean Wolf Lore and the felafæcne deor of Maxims I.C: Some Rhetorical and Legal Contexts for Recognising Another Old English wulf in Sheep’s Clothing’, ES, 97 (2016), 687–708 (pp. 690–1). ‘Consistent with the change from plural lupos to singular lupus in the Latin encyclopaedia’, Maxims I features a ‘grammatical shift from wulfas to deor (and gefera to geferan)’; ibid., p. 690. ‘Much as Isidore attributes the wolf’s name to its behaviour based on a bilingual pun – “it slaughters whatever it finds in a frenzy of violence” – the Maxims-poet recounts how the wolf frequently (ful oft) tears apart (sliteð) anyone who takes up with it’; ibid. ‘Isidore emphasises the wolf’s violent nature with the added observation that the wolf “is a violent beast, eager for gore”’, and ‘Maxims I.C parallels Isidore’s second observation in its assertion that the wolf does not weep “for the slaughter of men” because “it always desires more” (morþorcwealm mæcga, ac hit a mare wille)’. This also echoes Isidore’s description of how ‘the wolf wails (heofeð) and walks in circles (bewindeð) not as a metaphorical gesture of mourning but rather for literal hungre since wolves “endure hunger for a long time, and devour a large amount after a lengthy fast”’; ibid., pp. 690–1. See Dronke, ed., Poetic Edda, i, p. 14 n.1, and Thomas D. Hill, ‘The Foreseen Wolf and the Path of Wisdom: Proverbial and Beast Lore in Atlakviða’, Neophilologus, 77 (1993), 675–7.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Gif þu gesyxt wulfes spor ær þonne hyne, ne gesceþþeð he þe, gif ðu hafast mid þe wulfes hrycghær ⁊ tæglhær þa ytemæstan on siðfæte, butan fyrhtu þu ðone sið gefremest, ac se wulf sorgað ymbe sið.170 [If you see a wolf’s track before you see him, he will not hurt you if you have a hair from a wolf’s back and the uppermost hair from a wolf’s tail with you on your journey. You will undertake your journey without fear, but the wolf will be anxious for his journey.]

While this charm is not an original Old English work – it is a vernacular translation of the Liber medicinae ex animalibus of ‘Sextus Placitus’,171 which itself ‘draws liberally on Pliny’s Natural History’172 – it may imply knowledge of the speech-stealing wolf superstition on the part of the audience of this vernacular translation, even though the lupus in fabula is not mentioned explicitly. This is because charms are generally ‘highly allusive [in] nature […], created by a matrix of cultural associations’ and drawn from a ‘network of shared knowledge [which] makes it possible for the performer and audience […] to access the full significance of a charm through one single word or briefly recounted narrative’.173 Therefore, it could be that the description of the wolf-hair amulet and its purpose to ‘see’ the wolf first provided sufficient detail for the charm’s audience to understand that this was a reference to the speech-stealing wolf superstition. Indeed, some of the details from this charm are paralleled by a passage from the Eddic Atlakviða (c. ninth century), in which two brothers are sent a varinn váðom heiðingia ‘ring, wrapped in the heath-wanderer’s coat’ by their sister (st. 8), a warning ‘to guard [themselves] against a wolf as yet unseen by themselves’,174 the titular King Atli who is frequently described as lupine.175 Perhaps both texts



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Medicina de quadrupedibus, in The Old English Herbarium; and, Medicina de quadrupedibus, ed. by Hubert Jan de Vriend, EETS OS, 286 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 234–73 (p. 262). This figure may be ‘a nominis umbra, a phantom name, a mediæval bit of fun’; Oswald Cockayne, ed., Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, 3 vols (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1864–6), i (1864), lxxxix. Stephanie Hollis and Michael Wright, Old English Prose of Secular Learning, Annotated Bibliographies of Old and Middle English Literature, 4 (Cambridge: Brewer, 1992), p. 320. Rebecca Fisher, ‘Writing Charms: The Transmission and Performance of Charms in Anglo-Saxon England’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sheffield, 2011), pp. 138 and 140 respectively. See ibid., pp. 138–40 for more on this. Dronke, ed., Poetic Edda, i, p. 14 n.1. James V. McMahon, ‘Atli the Dog in the Atlakviða’, Scandinavian Studies, 63 (1991), 187–98 (p. 188).

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf tap into a ‘network of shared knowledge’ regarding the lupus in fabula in early medieval Europe.176 Alcuin’s mention of the speech-stealing wolf in a letter written to Charlemagne’s cousin, Adalhard of Corbie, also attests to this possibility: Passer aures habet apertas. Sed, ut video, proverbialis in fabula lupus gallo tulit vocem; ne forte cantante illo apostolica negatio renovaretur in urbe antiquae potestatis, et sit error novissimus peior priori.177 [The sparrow hath his ears open. But I see that the proverbial wolf (this is said to mean the devil) has taken away the cock’s voice; lest it happen that if he crowed, the apostolic denial should be renewed in the city of his former power, and the last error be worse than the first.]178

While this is clearly a reference to the lupus in fabula proverb, the context in which Alcuin uses the maxim, with the wolf serving as a metaphor for the devil, displays affinities to Ambrose’s Christianised versions of the superstition. Perhaps, given that he named Ambrose in his York poem,179 Alcuin had read the Hexameron or Expositio Lucan. Yet Ambrose – or any of the other authors in whose works Alcuin may have read of the speech-stealing wolf superstition – may not have been Alcuin’s ultimate source. Rather, the offhanded manner in which Alcuin mentions the speech-stealing wolf, without explanation or elaboration, suggests that he trusted it would be understood by Adalhard. Though Adalhard was a learned man, and he could plausibly have learned of the proverb in his own reading, Alcuin’s apparent assumption that his addressee would understand what he meant by the proverbialis in fabula lupus ‘proverbial wolf [in the story]’ might suggest that the superstition was prevalent enough in common parlance that he could be assured that his allusion to it would be understood by Adalhard, just as appears to be implied by Sedulius Scottus in his commentary on Donatus’s Ars grammatica.

Conclusion: Returning to the Origin of the Speech-stealing Wolf Spanning works written across a period of over a thousand years and in numerous geographic regions, the rich textual history of the superstition evidences that the speech-stealing wolf held the interest of scholars – and, Fisher, p. 140. Alcuin, Epistolae, in Epistolae Karolini aevi II, ed. by Dümmler, pp. 1–481 (p. 299). 178 G. F. Browne, Alcuin of York: Lectures Delivered in the Cathedral Church of Bristol in 1907 and 1908 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1908), pp. 265–6. 179 See p. 79 above. 176 177

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts potentially, of rustici ‘country folk’ too – throughout classical and early medieval Western Europe. The wide variety of textual contexts in which it appears, from Ancient Greek pastoral poetry to Roman natural history and early medieval European grammatical treatises, among others, demonstrate the versatility and adaptability of the superstition, and perhaps explain its appeal. Other lupine myths may account for the existence of beliefs in the speech-stealing power of wolves. For example, it has been suggested that this superstition was ‘a natural outgrowth and concomitant of belief in lycanthropy’ since, as a product of their transformation, the werewolf ‘loses the ability to speak’.180 Indeed, in some cases the loss of speech serves as a defining feature of the werewolf’s transformation, as when Lycaon is turned into a wolf in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (first century bc) in punishment for attempting to feed human flesh to Zeus. Like the outlaw whose human status is revoked as a consequence of his bestial crimes, Lycaon’s ‘transformation only ma[kes] manifest the bestial nature that had been within’.181 Yet Lycaon’s soul was so ‘polluted by bestiality’ that,182 even in human form, his inner ‘bestial nature’ bled into his appearance such that, post-transformation, he remains eadem feritatis imago est ‘the same picture of beastly savagery’ as he always was, retaining canities eadem […], eadem violentia vultus, idem oculi lucent ‘the same grey hair, the same fierce face, the same gleaming eyes’ he had possessed as a human.183 As such, the only complete transformation to which Lycaon is subjected is his loss of voice, a loss he feels keenly when, post-metamorphosis, he exululat frustraque loqui conatur ‘howls aloud, attempting in vain to speak’.184 This theory might also explain why Virgil’s Eclogue IX, one of the oldest texts in which the superstition is featured, is set in Arcadia,185 the realm of which Lycaon was king and which was the site of lycanthropic legends.186 Indeed, the magician in Eclogue IX who describes himself as having lost his voice to the speech-stealing wolf is himself a lycanthrope, as is seen in the previous Eclogue: his ego saepe lupum fieri et se condere silvis / Moerim, saepe animas imis

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183 181 182



184 185



186

Lee Fratantuono, ‘The Wolf in Virgil’, Revue des études anciennes, 120 (2018), 101–20 (p. 105). Salisbury, p. 140. Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 349. Ovid, Metamorphoses: Books 1–8, ed. and trans. by Frank Justus Miller, 3rd edn, rev. by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library, 42 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 18–19 (line 239). Ibid., line 233. For more on this setting, see Wendell Clausen, A Commentary on Virgil: ‘Eclogues’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 289–90. See, for example, Plato, Republic, ed. and trans. by Emlyn-Jones and Preddy, ii: Books 6–10, 289–91, and Pliny, Natural History: Books 8–11, ed. and trans. by Rackham, pp. 60–1.

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The Superstition of the Speech-stealing Wolf excire sepulcris / atque satas ‘I have oft seen Moeris turn wolf and hide in the woods, oft call spirits from the depth of the grave’.187 It is not necessary to seek a specific source, however; it could be that the superstition simply arose out of the fear of encountering a wolf unexpectedly. A wolf’s sudden appearance – made more likely by the elusive nature of this animal, and the fact that they do sometimes ambush their prey188 – would no doubt shock the person whom it had encountered into frightened speechlessness.189 Perhaps this natural fear reaction led to a post hoc ergo propter hoc assumption that the wolf possessed the power to strike a person dumb with its eyes. In turn, the same fear with which the superstition originated likely perpetuated its dissemination. In pastoral Ancient Rome and Greece, wolves would have been one of – if not the most – fearsome top predator(s), invoking a terror which tales of cannibalistic lycanthropes would only have perpetuated. His speech-stealing powers likewise added to the catalogue of reasons to fear the wolf which accrued throughout history, ensuring that the superstition enjoyed a prominent position in the wolf lore which circulated in Greco-Roman and early medieval literature. In early medieval England, where wolves were conceptualised as sheep-stealing, corpse-eating creatures of the wilderness who were aligned with criminal outlaws and the devil, capable of inflicting potentially lethal harm upon a human being, another reason to fear and despise these agents of Satan was hardly necessary. Yet, paradoxically, this probably only strengthened the superstition’s appeal and increased the likelihood of it taking hold. With such a litany of fearful characteristics and associations attributed to this animal, it would be surprising if a person who encountered a wolf in early medieval England was not struck dumb with fright, giving the lucky survivor of such a terrifying encounter a first-hand account of the superstition’s truth. If the superstition was known in early medieval England, the fact of its circulation will in turn have increased the fear surrounding this animal. Not only did the superstition contribute yet another reason to fear an encounter with a wolf in the real world (hence, perhaps, the amuletic

187



188



189

Eclogue VIII, in Virgil, ed. and trans. by Rushton Fairclough, pp. 72–83 (lines 97–9). See L. David Mech, Douglas W. Smith, and Daniel R. MacNulty, Wolves on the Hunt: The Behavior of Wolves Hunting Wild Prey (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. 5–6. Indeed, as Spears has noticed, Isidore’s statement that a wolf ‘puts aside his bold ferocity’ if he is seen first is paralleled by real-world wolf behaviour since, ‘if sighted, wolves are less likely to attack’; ‘Identifying with the Beast’, pp. 136–7. This has been suggested previously by Thomas Browne; see Pseudodoxia epidemica, in Thomas Browne: Selected Writings, ed. by Kevin Killeen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 85–506 (p. 248).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts use of wolf hair in the Old English charm), but this unique power also called into question the strength of the boundary which divided human from animal. By stealing a person’s speech, the God-given marker of their humanity, the wolf could render his victim no better than a lawless, godless animal of the wastes.

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3 A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer

‘O

f this I can make no sense, nor am I able to arrange the verses’.1 This oft-repeated sentence, written by a defeated Benjamin Thorpe, refers to 117 of the most beguiling words in the Old English poetic corpus, which together are known as Wulf and Eadwacer or, hereafter, Wulf.2 In the almost two-hundred years since Thorpe declined to attempt to construct a translation of it, this text has proved a ‘notorious lodestone and analytical trap for critics’3 which, despite a monumental collective effort to unravel these nineteen lines undertaken by both scholars and translators alike, continues to elude interpretation. Wulf’s elusiveness is a product of its ‘unusual concentration of hapax legomena, rare words, and obscure images’;4 of its ‘cryptic style’;5 and of its ‘double meanings and ambiguous terms’6 which combine to create a plethora of potential meanings for many of the lines and, in turn, for the poem as a whole. These features, it seems, were ‘contrived with the specific intention of making the poem enigmatic’,7 much like the riddles which it precedes in the Exeter Book manuscript. It is not only in style that this poem mirrors the riddles which follow it, however; Wulf also features numerous ‘animal words like wulf and hwelp [“pup”]’, recalling ‘the personification of the non-human’, including of numerous animals, found within the riddles.8 Indeed, just as the animal subjects of the riddles 1



2



3

4



5



6



7

8



Codex Exoniensis: A Collection of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, from a Manuscript in the Library of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter (London: Pickering, 1842), p. 527 n.380. See p. 96 n.46 below for the reasoning behind the use of this abbreviation. Stanley B. Greenfield, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: All Passion Pent’, ASE, 15 (1986), 5–14 (p. 5). James E. Anderson, ‘Deor, Wulf and Eadwacer, and The Soul’s Address: How and Where the Old English Exeter Book Riddles Begin’, in The Old English Elegies: New Essays in Criticism and Research, ed. by Martin Green (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1983), pp. 204–30 (p. 205). Anne L. Klinck, ed., The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study (Montreal, QC and Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), p. 49. Blud, p. 337. Marijane Osborn, ‘The Text and Context of Wulf and Eadwacer’, in Old English Elegies: New Essays, ed. by Green, pp. 174–89 (p. 182). Klinck, ed., Elegies, p. 47.

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts are given voices, permitted into the human world even as they exceed it,9 so too in Wulf do we find a curious mixture of human and animal. Yet this poem is not merely a ‘riddle’ in which wolves and whelps are personified. Rather, like many other riddles which tell the stories of two objects in parallel, Wulf presents two interwoven stories of two different beings: the wolf and the outlaw. Just as these riddles of dual meaning provide no indication of which interpretation is literal and which is figurative, nor do they extend an invitation to find a single ‘solution’ by foregrounding one figure’s identity over the other,10 neither the wolf nor the outlaw precludes the other in Wulf, reflecting the perceived lack of distinction between the two in medieval England. Wulf’s affinity with the riddles characterised early scholarship upon it, with those who first tackled it treating it as the first riddle of the Exeter Book. A variety of solutions were proposed, including the name ‘Cynewulf’ (who was presumed to be the poem’s author),11 ‘millstone’,12 ‘riddle’ itself,13 and even ‘Christian Preacher’ due to the traditional association of wolves with the devil.14 In the late nineteenth century, however, discourse upon the poem turned in a different direction when, rejecting In Riddle 7, for example, the swan uses its human voice to describe how it soars ofer hæleþa byht ‘over the dwellings of men’ (line 3), and how the wind ofer folc byreð ‘carries [it] above all people’ (line 6). 10 This is a particular tendency of the ‘sexual riddles’ such as Riddle 25 (whose speaker may be interpreted as both a penis and an onion) and Riddle 44 (penis and key), though it is also seen in Riddle 5, whose speaker can be taken as both a shield and a chopping board; see Jennifer Neville, ‘Joyous Play and Bitter Tears: The Riddles and the Elegies’, in ‘Beowulf’ and Other Stories: A New Introduction to Old English, Old Icelandic, and Anglo-Norman Literatures, ed. by Richard North and Joe Allard, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 130–59 (pp. 132–3). These riddles are different from those with multiple proposed (and not agreed-upon) solutions, although Wulf is also similar to these poems in that consensus has not been reached regarding its meaning. In its doubleness and its animalistic subject Wulf is also similar to the Old English Physiologus poems which have both literal and allegorical meanings, although the parallel with Wulf is not exact since, ‘while the riddles allow, and in some cases encourage, uncertainty with respect to their solutions (some remain unsolved to this day)’ the Physiologus poems ‘highlight the importance of correct interpretation by giving a detailed exegetical reading’; Brian McFadden, ‘Sweet Odours and Interpretative Authority in the Exeter Book Physiologus and Phoenix’, Papers on Language and Literature, 42 (2006), 181–209 (pp. 181–2). 11 Heinrich Leo, Commentatio quae de se ipso Cynevulfus, sive Cenewulfas, sive Coenevulfas poeta Anglo-Saxonicus tradiderit (Halle: Hendel, 1857), pp. 21–7. 12 H. Patzig, ‘Zum ersten Rätsel des Exeterbuchs’, Archiv, 145 (1923), 204–7. 13 M. Trautmann, ‘Cynewulf und die Rätsel’, Anglia, 6 (1883), 158–69. 14 Henry Morley, English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature, 11 vols (London: Cassell, 1887–95), ii: From Cædmon to the Conquest (1888), pp. 225–6. 9

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer the riddle interpretation, Henry Bradley argued that Wulf should instead be taken as a woman’s ‘dramatic soliloquy’, an interpretation that has generally guided scholars since.15 In 1931, W. J. Sedgefield in turn broke with this new scholarly consensus. The first to consider Wulf as an animal poem, Sedgefield identified the speaker as a dog recalling ‘a wolf with whom she has actually had, or dreams she had, a love-affair’. The dog is then ‘awakened from her dream by the terrified yelping of her puppy’, whose father, Eadwacer, is ‘her lawful mate, slumbering by her side’.16 This highly adventurous reading was not found sufficiently convincing to alter the course of scholarship on the poem until over half a century later, when Peter Orton declared Sedgefield’s theory ‘far too hastily rejected’.17 Orton expanded upon Sedgefield’s initial interpretation, examining all of the evidence which may imply Wulf and the speaker’s animality and concluding that both Wulf and the speaker should be identified as wolves. Two years hence, Anne L. Klinck united elements of both the love-lyric and animal-poem interpretations, considering Wulf a ‘love poem’ with a ‘thread of animal imagery running through[out]’.18 Contrary to Walter Nash’s assertion that ‘all that is needed’ to produce a new reading of Wulf ‘is to create a new “plausible context”’ in which to read it,19 these studies demonstrate that one need not ‘create’ a context for the text at all. Instead, with the lupine epithet of its titular character and the bestial imagery found throughout, Wulf provides two contexts in which it may be read: as a poem about wolves, or about wolf-like people (outlaws). Yet even these seemingly self-evident ‘contexts’ have been denied in the past. E. G. Stanley, for example, suggested that the animalistic name of Wulf bore little significance, arguing in particular that ‘there is no evidence for believing that […] the monothematic name Wulf […] would have suggested to the Anglo-Saxons, as it has suggested to generations of Anglo-Saxonists, that Wulf was an outlaw’; not least since, as he contended, ‘the word wulf is very common as a name-element and is sometimes used as a monothematic name’.20 The former assertion is certainly true; compound names including wulf as both prefix and suffix are so common that they scarcely warrant 17 18 15 16



19



20

‘The First Riddle of the Exeter Book’, Academy, 33 (1888), 197–8. ‘Old English Notes’, Modern Language Review, 26 (1931), 74–5 (p. 74). ‘An Approach to Wulf and Eadwacer’, p. 240. ‘Animal Imagery in Wulf and Eadwacer and the Possibilities of Interpretation’, Papers on Language and Literature, 23 (1987), 3–13 (pp. 13 and 10 respectively). ‘An Anglo-Saxon Mystery’, Language and Literature, 19 (2010), 99–113 (p. 103). Similarly, Renoir notes that ‘the only serious difference between modern readers and the original audience of the poem is that the latter was presumably equipped with the information necessary to place it in the appropriate context’; ‘Noninterpretation’, p. 148. ‘Wolf’, pp. 53 and 46 respectively.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts comment: the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England lists 294 instances of the name Wulfric alone, for example.21 In contrast, however, Wulf as a simplex name is notably uncommon. The Prosopography records only two instances; one from the Domesday Book, the other from a thirteenth-century manuscript in which the will of a man named Wulf dating to c. 1050 was copied.22 The latter, however, was in fact probably named by the Norse ‘Ulf’, given that he was elsewhere referred to as Quidam Danus praepotens ‘A certain very powerful Dane’.23 Stanley lists two other records of the name, though neither are entirely convincing. The first, the ‘Wulf Wonreding in Beowulf (line 2965)’,24 may be an anglicisation of Norse Ulfr,25 while the second, the ‘Wulf of the annal for 1010 in the D version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’,26 appears to be simply a shortened version of ‘Wulfric’.27 Another Wulf is named as the moneyer on ‘coins minted at Canterbury under Æthelred II (978–1016) and at Lincoln under Edward the Confessor (1043–66)’ but, as with the eleventh-century will of Wulf, these appear to be alternative spellings of Ulf given that ‘coins from the same mints and reigns record’ this name, and that ‘variation between Scandinavian and Old English forms of moneyers’ names will probably more often reflect anglicisation of the Scandinavian name than vice versa’.28 Despite the prevalence of compound names including this term, then, the monothematic name Wulf is in fact ‘very rare’.29 In combination with the fact that many people in early medieval England ‘held Isidore’s Etymologiae in such high regard’ and were ‘certainly not unaware of the potential for meaningfulness that personal names possessed’,30 the lupine appellation of the character for which Wulf has been titled must be significant. This is also suggested by the fact that the term wulf is heavily emphasised, appearing five times in only nineteen lines and stressed repeatedly through alliteration, and the character is ‘dehumanize[d]’ by the language

21 22



23

26 27 28 29 30 24 25

See [accessed 12 July 2021]. For the text of this will, see Electronic Sawyer [accessed 10 December 2021], S 1532. Orton, p. 226; see Liber de benefactoribus monasterii Sancti Albani, compendiose confectus, in Chronica monasterii S. Albani, ed. by Henry Thomas Riley (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1866), pp. 427–64 (p. 444). Stanley, p. 46. Orton, p. 226. Stanley, p. 46. Orton, p. 226. Ibid., and p. 226 n.12. Ibid., p. 225. Christopher Abram, ‘Bee-Wolf and the Hand of Victory: Identifying the Heroes of Beowulf and Vǫlsunga saga’, JEGP, 116 (2017), 387–414 (p. 388). For more on this, see Fred C. Robinson, ‘The Significance of Names in Old English Literature’, Anglia, 86 (1968), 14–58.

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer used to describe him, a bestializing ‘image complex’ surrounding his character.31 So too is Wulf’s behaviour comparable to that of real-world wolves, animals which, like the characters of this poem, may have occupied or been thought to occupy fenland in early medieval England. In Sarah Higley’s words: ‘if the object of the woman’s longing is to be seen, even metaphorically, as an animal, this poem really pushes that connection’.32 As the phrase ‘even metaphorically’ indicates, however, each of the images which are suggestive of Wulf’s animality may also be interpreted symbolically, suggesting that he is not a wolf but a wolf-like human: an outlaw. Both Orton and Klinck acknowledged this possibility,33 a line of inquiry which was in turn extended by Higley, Sarah Harlan-Haughey, and Victoria Blud, all of whom analysed the poem in terms of the association between the wolf and outlaw.34 Other than Higley, however, each of these scholars took the lupine imagery as indicative only of the perceived wolfishness of the outlaw, focussing on one ‘context’ at the expense of the other in the ‘desperate need to achieve closure in the act of reading’.35 33 34 31 32



35

Klinck, ‘Animal Imagery’, p. 11. ‘Werewolf’, p. 373. See ‘An Approach to Wulf and Eadwacer’, p. 257, and ‘Animal Imagery’, p. 7. See ‘Werewolf’, pp. 369–75; English Outlaw, pp. 49–55; and ‘Wolves’ Heads’, pp. 336–42 respectively. Marilynn Desmond, ‘The Voice of Exile: Feminist Literary History and the Anonymous Anglo-Saxon Elegy’, Critical Inquiry, 16 (1990), 572–90 (p. 589). Orton is perhaps most guilty of this since, despite acknowledging that ‘it may be that the wulf of our poem is outlawed’, and conceding that this possibility ‘is perhaps not to be dismissed too readily’ (p. 228), he examines only a few instances of the association between outlaws and wolves before quickly concluding that ‘the notion of the outlaw seems to find no clear reflection in the poem’ (ibid., p. 257), having already determined that ‘there is nothing in the text which clarifies [Wulf’s] position under any system of law’; ibid., p. 228; see pp. 21–2 above. Klinck, on the other hand, does not consider the possibility that the bestial imagery in the poem could be literal, but instead suggests that ‘the image complex created by’ the animalistic and dehumanizing ‘vocabulary lends a distinctive coloring to the poem: a marked disparagement of lover/husband, [and] of child, and even of self’ (‘Animal Imagery’, p. 11), while Harlan-Haughey, in a generally over-zealous interpretation (‘this short poem does have definite and demonstrable connections with the bestial outlaw tradition’; English Outlaw, p. 55), begins under the assumption that ‘it seems most likely that the wolf imagery is intended to identify the “Wulf” character as an outlaw’; ibid, p. 49, and see pp. 49–55 for Harlan-Haughey’s full analysis of the poem. While Blud examines the wolfish nature of the speaker, she likewise embarks on her analysis with the assumption that this character’s lupine nature is not literal but is instead indicative of her outlawry; see ‘Wolves’ Heads’. Higley is the only scholar to offer a dual reading, noting that ‘whether Wulf is an outlaw, a warg, or a wolf is moot, but with this wealth of wordplay Wulf and Eadwacer presents us with a brilliant example of confused identities, hybridities, and suggested bestialities’, such that

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts But Wulf always resists. Here, ‘human and wolf categories’ are ‘insistently and disturbingly transposed’,36 the line between human and animal blurred to the point of indistinction, such that it is not possible to preference one reading over the other. With its ‘systematically planned design, coldly deliberate, to keep interpretation at a distance, and deny “closure”’,37 the poem echoes its own content, reflecting the fluidity between the outlaw and wolf so that neither and both are the answer to this riddlic poem. The most productive way of approaching this poem, then, is similar to the way in which the Exeter Book riddles with dual subjects or solutions should be addressed, whereby two meanings are held in concert with no attempt to separate one from the other, but with the acceptance that there is no single ‘solution’ nor a way to neatly unravel the entangled identities of the poem’s subjects. By accepting its doubleness and ambiguities rather than wrestling with the poem to force it to submit to a single interpretation,38 Wulf may, paradoxically, be found to possess a coherence.

Wulf and the Wolfish weras From the beginning of the poem, it is immediately clear that Wulf is an outsider of some sort, separated from civilisation not only physically (he […] cymeð ‘he […] comes’, lines 2 and 7), but socially too; ‘the speaker uses minum, “my”, of her leode [“people”], not “our”, which might imply that wulf is not a member but an interloper’.39 Likewise, if the referent of us in the repeated lines Ungelic(e) is us (lines 3 and 8) is taken to refer to the speaker and her people,40 the meaning of the phrase might be ‘we are different’, in the sense of ‘Wulf is not one of us’. The implications of this are unclear. Perhaps Wulf is a member of a different group unwelcome among the speaker’s leode ‘people’, such as a member of a rival wolf pack trespassing on another’s territory. Or perhaps he is a former member of

38 36 37



39 40

‘the cross-cultural associations of wolves, wargs, and wolfheads cannot be dismissed as a strong context for this poem’ (‘Werewolf’, pp. 371 and 374 respectively), although there remains scope for extending her analysis. Magennis, p. 70. Nash, p. 110. Patricia A. Belanoff, ‘Women’s Songs, Women’s Language: Wulf and Eadwacer and The Wife’s Lament’, in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature, ed. by Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 193–203 (p. 201). Orton, p. 244. Neil D. Isaacs argues that us ‘probably indicate[s] a “we” of more than two people in the refrain’, since the dual unc ‘our’ is not used; Structural Principles in Old English Poetry (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1968), p. 115.

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer the speaker’s people, cast out for a crime or misdeed, possibly his relationship with the speaker. With this in mind, it is easy to understand why the contentious term eadwacer (line 16), which may mean ‘watchman of property’,41 is most often taken not as an epithet to refer to Wulf but as an appropriate moniker for the speaker’s husband (her ‘guardian’) or for a gaoler, just as ‘Wulf’ is an appropriate name for a wandering outcast. Indeed, as with the simplex Wulf, Eadwacer is highly uncommon as a personal name, appearing only ‘in two charters […]; in a Latin life of Oswald and on two coins in the British Museum’.42 Yet the context in which the term appears calls the logic of this interpretation into question. In an emotional outburst, the speaker cries: Wulf, min Wulf, wena me þine seoce gedydon, þine seldcymas, murnende mod, nales meteliste

(lines 13–15)

[Wulf, my Wulf, my hopes of you have made me sick; your seldomcomings, my anxious mind, not lack of food at all.]

Immediately afterwards she asks, Gehyrest þu, eadwacer? ‘Do you hear, eadwacer?’ (line 16), a question which, if addressed to a second character, presents an incongruously abrupt shift in attention after the moving address of lines 13–15. Of course, one could suppose that this sudden change of direction represents an emotional outburst to a captor: ‘Do you hear, Eadwacer? I love him!’. Yet the lines which follow, Uncerne earne hwelp / bireð wulf to wuda ‘Our wretched pup is borne to the woods by a wolf’ (lines 16–17), present problems for this interpretation. Hwelp appears to be an epithet for a child conceived of the speaker and the second referent of uncerne ‘our’. This referent is most likely Wulf given that hwelp means ‘a young dog, whelp’,43 suggesting that the child is of animal descent either literally or metaphorically. As with Wulf’s own name, the poet’s use of this term is likely to be significant, since it represents ‘the only instance in Old English where the term is thus applied to a human offspring’.44 Hence, if eadwacer is a proper noun, one is confronted with a strange situation whereby the speaker initially addresses Eadwacer directly, only to then use uncerne ‘our’ to refer to herself and a different 43 44 41 42

BT s.v. eād-wacer, p. 225. Klinck, ed., Elegies, p. 175. DOE s.v. hwelp [accessed 14 September 2018]. Norman E. Eliason, ‘On Wulf and Eadwacer’, in Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, ed. by Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1974), pp. 225–34 (p. 226).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts man in order to tell Eadwacer about the fate of a child that is not his and which, presumably, he would not lament if it were to be taken by a wolf to the woods. Moreover, the second instance of uncer in the phrase uncer giedd geador ‘our song together’ (line 19) almost certainly refers to Wulf since this phrase implies an intimate relationship between the two people referred to. It is highly unlikely that both instances of uncer are ‘divergent in reference, […] given their close relationship’,45 suggesting that the uncer ‘our’ of line 16 also refers to Wulf. One might get around such difficulties by assuming that the identity of the child’s father is known to Eadwacer, and that he therefore would know to whom the uncer ‘our’ in line 16 referred. However, given that the second referent of uncer is most likely to be the figure most recently named, Eadwacer, we return to the unlikely scenario that a child epitheted with the term hwelp ‘pup’ does not belong to the man named Wulf. The most logical interpretation, therefore, is that eadwacer is an epithet for Wulf himself.46 In this case, one must consider why Wulf – a figure who is most certainly not a ‘watchman of property’47 but a nomadic wolf(en outlaw) who wanders far from civilisation in his fenland haunts – might be termed by an epithet which apparently contradicts the very nature of his being. However, this term is perfectly fitting if one considers the speaker to be ‘ironically bestowing on the man a character which the context implies most emphatically he lacks, that of being a protector and guardian of his home’, given that she is ‘an abandoned, or what amounts to the same thing, semi-abandoned, woman’, left unprotected by Wulf in his absences.48 An ironic use of eadwacer in this way is an equally fitting description of both the outlaw and the lone wolf; an outlaw has no home to guard (by definition, ‘the property-watcher [is] the antithesis of the outlaw’),49 while male wolves support their mate and new-born pups by ‘defense of homesites, hunting, and provisioning the lactating female’,50 which

45



46

49 47 48



50

Seiichi Suzuki, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: A Reinterpretation and Some Conjectures’, NM, 88 (1987), 175–85 (p. 180). Conceptions of the poem may have been skewed by the fact that Eadwacer is a fixture of the poem’s modern title, ‘perpetuating the theory that Eadwacer in the text must be a personal name because it is a personal name in the title’; John F. Adams, ‘“Wulf and Eadwacer”: An Interpretation’, Modern Language Notes, 73 (1958), 1–5 (p. 1). To avoid the assumption that ‘Eadwacer’ is a character the poem is best named simply as Wulf, as is preferred here. BT s.v. eād-wacer, p. 225. Adams, p. 2. Terrence Keough, ‘The Tension of Separation in Wulf and Eadwacer’, NM, 77 (1976), 552–60 (p. 552). Jane M. Packard, ‘Wolf Behavior: Reproductive, Social, and Intelligent’, in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, ed. by L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 35–65 (p. 50).

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer Wulf does not (and perhaps cannot) do for the speaker and their hwelp ‘pup’ (line 11).51 Eadwacer need not be taken as ironic, however, as the suffix wacer does not necessarily refer to ‘watching’ as in ‘guarding’, but could instead connote ‘watching’ in the sense of ‘observing’.52 Since ead as a simplex and within other compounds denotes happiness and prosperity,53 an eadwacer might therefore be a person excluded from the blessings, happiness and prosperity of society, an observer on the outside peering in.54 In a similar vein, wacer can be taken as ‘the comparative form of the adjective wac’,55 which can mean ‘poor, mean, not of great value or in high esteem’.56 Combined with ead in the senses of ‘happiness’ and ‘wealth, riches’,57 this would yield a compound meaning ‘poorer in possession / happiness’, again a fitting description for an outlaw,58 to whom the lone wolf – who, by nature of its solitary existence, is deprived of both a social group and the territory and food which go along with it – is analogous. If eadwacer is interpreted as a noun referring to Wulf, then, each of these possible meanings might contribute to an understanding of this character as possessing a dual wolf/outlaw identity. Eadwacer is not the only term which suggests this, with the line between human and animal also blurred by the fact that a character who may be



51



52



53 54



55



56



57 58

See p. 111 below. Although Klinck argues that ‘a “wolf” and a “watcher” fulfil mutually antagonistic rôles’ (Elegies, p. 175), wolves possess keen eyesight (Fred H. Harrington and Cheryl S. Asa, ‘Wolf Communication’, in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, ed. by Mech and Boitani, pp. 66–103 (pp. 96–9)), and they both watch their prey closely and ‘watch over’ other members of their pack. The adjectives wacor and wæccer mean ‘watchful’ and ‘vigilant’ (BT s.v. wacor, p. 1148, and wæccer, p. 1149), while the noun wacen means ‘wakefulness, sleeplessness’; ‘a watch, vigil’; ‘a watch, a division of the night’; ‘a watch, guard’; or ‘a rousing, an incitement’ (BT s.v. wacen, p. 1147). The verbs wacian and wæccan, meanwhile, mean ‘to watch, wake’ (BT s.v. wacian, pp. 1147–8, and wæccan, p. 1149); and ge-wæccan means ‘to watch’; BT s.v. ge-wæccan, p. 463. DOE s.v. ead [accessed 16 September 2018]. One is reminded of Grendel’s jealous observation of Heorot and the blessings of society from which he is excluded; see chapter five below. Donald K. Fry, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: A Wen Charm’, Chaucer Review, 5 (1971), 247–63 (p. 261). BT s.v. wāc, p. 1147. Wac can also mean ‘yielding, not rigid, pliant, fluid’ (ibid.), a fitting description of Wulf, whose identity oscillates between human and animal. DOE s.v. ead [accessed 16 September 2018]. Keough follows a similar line of interpretation, taking the epithet to mean ‘property-watcher’ but considering it to be ‘a collective noun referring […] to the Leodum [people]’, with the outlawed Wulf thus ‘a symbol of the antithesis of those who form the society’; ‘Tension of Separation’, pp. 556–7.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Wulf is described as se beaducafa ‘the battle-bold [one]’ (line 11).59 This term could be ‘a product of the same analogy between warrior and beast as is expressed in such wolf metaphors as wælwulf [“slaughter-wolf”] and hildewulf [“battle-wolf”]’,60 suggesting that Wulf might be considered akin to such wolf-warriors. Indeed, the beaducafa’s arms are termed bogas (line 11), which ‘in the sense of a shoulder or upper part of a limb is always used of animals in Old English, never of men’,61 again implying Wulf’s animal(istic) nature. Wulf also appears to be treated like an animal by the speaker’s people. Although the terms lac and aþecgan in the lines Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife; / willað hy hine aþecgan […] ‘To my people it would be like receiving a lac; they will aþecgan him […]’ can be interpreted positively or negatively based on their contradictory meanings,62 suggesting that the

59



60



61 62

Beaducafa is here taken as a possible reference to Wulf (or to one of the weras; see pp. 109–10 below) since ‘the use of the demonstrative se tends to indicate an established character; if he were a hitherto unmentioned one [i.e., Eadwacer], we might expect a clearer indication than we are given of his relationship with the speaker’ (Orton, p. 236), although the issue is moot if eadwacer is taken to refer to Wulf. Orton, p. 236; see p. 27 above for more on these compounds. In this vein, it is worth noting that Beaduwulf was also a given name (see ‘Beaduwulf’, Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England [accessed 16 November 2019]), and might be related to the name Beowulf; see BT s.v. Beadu-wulf, p. 70, and Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, The Condemnation of Heroism in the Tragedy of ‘Beowulf’: A Study in the Characterization of the Epic, Studies in Epic and Romance Literature, 2 (Lewiston, NY: Mellen, 1989), p. 11. Orton, p. 234. Lac means ‘battle, struggle’; ‘offering, sacrifice, oblation’; ‘medicine’; as well as ‘gift, present, grace, favour, service; a present or offering of words, a message’ (BT s.v. lāc, pp. 603–4), while the related noun gelac means ‘motion, commotion, tumultuous assembly, play’; BT s.v. ge-lāc, p. 406. The two meanings of aþecgan are also contradictory: its usage in Wulf is defined in BT as ‘to receive’ (s.v. a-þecgan, p. 58), while in the DOE it is described as being ‘interpreted contextually’ as ‘“to kill (someone)”; the context is obscure and the verb has also been interpreted as “to serve, feed” and “to receive, welcome”’; s.v. aþecgan [accessed 12 September 2018]. The meaning ‘to serve, feed’ is gleaned from the only other appearance of the term in a passage from Bald’s Leechbook, in which it is stated that Gif mon þung ete aþege buteran ⁊ drince (Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft, ed. and trans. by Cockayne, ii (1865), 154) ‘If a man eats a poisonous plant, he should eat and drink butter’, while most instances of the related verb þicgan (‘to take, receive, accept’; ‘to take food, poison, medicine, etc., to eat or drink, consume’; BT s.v. þicgan, p. 1058) display a similar meaning. Since, ‘as a causative verb, […] (-)þecgan ought to have the same relation to þicgan as, say, lecgan, “to lay”, has to licgan, “to lie”’, aþecgan has often been taken to mean ‘to feed’; Orton, p. 238. However, ‘the question is complicated […] by the fact that in the other contexts in which forms apparently from (-)þecgan occur, the verb concerned has strong

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer person described ‘might be as easily absorbed into the group as abjected by it’,63 the latter scenario seems far likelier given that the terms ‘present[] the […] referent as if he were an object’,64 perhaps the prize promised by a successful hunt of a wolf or a dehumanised outlaw.65 Indeed, lac and aþecgan are also accompanied by the phrase gif he on þreat cymeð ‘if he comes with a / upon the / in (to) þreat’ (lines 2 and 7), þreat meaning both ‘troop, band, crowd, body of people, swarm, press, throng’, and ‘violence, compulsion, force, oppression, punishment, ill-treatment’.66 Although, as with lac and aþecgan, the meaning of this word is not clear-cut and can likewise imply a number of different scenarios – Wulf will arrive with a ‘troop’, or the leod ‘people’ are themselves a ‘troop’ into whose midst Wulf enters; Wulf will be met with ‘violence’ from the leod ‘people’, or he will bring ‘violence’ to them67 – the militaristic and conflictive connotations of the phrase on þreat cymeð do not seem positive.68 Likewise, a friendly reception of Wulf by the speaker’s people is precluded by the fact that, ‘if Wulf has a secure place among friends with the speaker’s people, we wonder why she seems so worried about him’,69 her murnende mod ‘anxious mind’ (line 15) directly associated with Wulf’s seldcymas ‘seldom-comings’ (line 14). While the latter term can be regarded as ‘litotes for “never coming”’,70 suggesting that the speaker is worried that Wulf’s absence means he has been caught or killed, seldcymas may also mean ‘rare visit[s]’,71 implying that the speaker worries that Wulf could be captured when he makes his infrequent appearances. The latter would explain why his visits are both wyn ‘joyful’ and lað ‘painful’ (line 12) for the speaker, and why her wena ‘hopes’ of him make her seoce ‘sick’ (lines

65 63 64

68 66 67

71 69 70

connotations of oppression or destruction’ (ibid.; see also BT s.v. of-þecgan, p. 743), suggesting that aþecgan could therefore also potentially mean ‘to kill’; Peter S. Baker, ‘The Ambiguity of Wulf and Eadwacer’, Studies in Philology, 78 (1981), 39–51 (p. 43). Thus, even if lac is taken to mean ‘gift’, the nature of the ‘gift’ of Wulf’s presence may also be contradictory. Either it is positive and the leod ‘people’ will provide Wulf with food, or else it is negative, his presence a ‘gift’ because they want to destroy and perhaps ‘consume’ him, whether literally or metaphorically; ibid., p. 44. Blud, p. 338. Klinck, ‘Animal Imagery’, p. 11. Gustav Budjuhn interprets the opening line to mean ‘my people are ready to fight’ or ‘hunt’, based on an interpretation of lac as ‘battle’ or ‘game’; ‘Lēodum is mīnum – ein ae. Dialog’, Anglia, 40 (1916), 256–9 (p. 258). BT s.v. þreāt, p. 1067. See Klinck, ‘Animal Imagery’, pp. 6–7. The lines are therefore translated here as ‘To my people it would be like receiving a gift; they will tear him up if he comes to the troop’. Renoir, p. 153. Baker, ‘Ambiguity’, p. 48. BT s.v. seld-cyme, p. 859.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts 13–14): she longs for Wulf to visit as their time together is joyful, but it is punctuated by the sickening fear that he will be caught and killed.72 That the speaker’s people are ill-intentioned towards Wulf can also be intimated by the fact that they are described as wælreowe (line 6),73 an adjective meaning ‘cruel, barbarous, bloodthirsty’.74 Such men ‘are surely not willing to receive Wulf with open arms’ nor feed him;75 rather, ‘his corpse will be like a gift’ (lac) to them.76 This, in combination with the imagery that bestializes him, suggests that Wulf may be both an outcast who will be killed by the speaker’s people if they discover that he has ventured onto their island, as well as a lone wolf who will pay with his life if he dares to traverse near or within human settlements. Yet though they treat Wulf like a wolf(ish outlaw), the description of the speaker’s people as wælreowe ‘bloodthirsty’ may imply that they too are lupine, in both literal and figurative terms. Orton argues that the phrase wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ is a reversal of the wolf-warrior metaphor wælwulf ‘slaughter-wolf’, used of the Vikings in Maldon (line 96) and the Mermedonians in Andreas (line 149). Indeed, ‘independent evidence’ of such a reversal is found in Riddle 15, in which a ‘predatory beast’, which appears to be either a dog or wolf, is described as a wælgrim wiga ‘slaughter-cruel warrior’ (line 8) and a wælhwelp ‘slaughter-whelp’ (line 23).77 Perhaps, then, that Wulf’s weras ‘men’ are a pack of wolves by whom the lone Wulf is rejected; wolves are indeed ‘generally […] highly territorial’,78 and ‘the hostility of wolf-packs to intruders from other packs or to lone wolves’, whom they may ‘energetically chase[] off’ or injure, ‘is well documented’.79 Wolf packs have even been known to cannibalise lone wolves trespassing on their territory, just as Wulf is at risk of being killed



72 73



74 75

78 76 77



79

See Renoir, p. 160. Most critics agree that the wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ are the same group as the leod ‘people’ of line 1, as suggested by the repetition of the line willað hy hine aþecgan gif he on þreat cymeð ‘they will tear him up if he comes to the troop’ (lines 2 and 7) directly after references to the leod ‘people’ in line 1 and to the weras ‘men’ in line 6; Osborn, ‘Text and Context’, p. 177. BT s.v. wæl-hreōw, p. 1154. Concetta Sipione, ‘Translation as Interpretation: Creating Poetic Identities in the Old English Wulf and Eadwacer’, in Soggetti situati, ed. by Anita Fabiani, Stefania Arcara, and Manuela D’Amore (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2017), pp. 69–81 (p. 77). Baker, ‘Ambiguity’, p. 45. ‘An Approach to Wulf and Eadwacer’, p. 237. L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani, ‘Wolf Social Ecology’, in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, ed. by L. David Mech and Luigi Boitani (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 1–34 (p. 19). Orton, p. 245.

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer and consumed (aþecgan) by these wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’.80 This bestialising imagery may also refer to wolf-like humans, however; wælreowe ‘bloodthirsty’ echoes similar terms used of wolf-like people elsewhere, such as Ælfric’s thieves whose wælhreownysse ‘cruelty’ renders them swa swa reðe wulfas ‘like savage wolves’.81 Likewise, the wælreowe weras have a terrible fate in store for Wulf, whom they will aþecgan ‘tear up’. This group is as savage as wolves in their capacity for the vicious destruction and consumption of another being. Wælreowe also echoes the term wælreaf ‘spoils’ which, being used to describe both the material objects and the flesh taken from a corpse, conceptually blurs the theft from the dead committed by humans and animals. For example, in The Battle of Brunanburh, the Beast of Battle topos ‘is immediately followed by [a] reference to […] “slaughter” on the “island”’, in a passage which ‘shares the lexical referents of wæl [“slaughter”] and eiglande [“island”] employed by the Wulf and Eadwacer poet’ (lines 4–6):82 Letan him behindan hræw bryttian saluwigpadan, þone sweartan hræfn, hyrnednebban, and þane hasewanpadan, earn æftan hwit, æses brucan, grædigne guðhafoc and þæt græge deor, wulf on wealde. Ne wearð wæl mare on þis eiglande æfre gieta folces gefylled beforan þissum sweordes ecgum (lines 60–8) [They left behind carcasses for the dark-plumed one to enjoy, that blackened, hard-beaked raven; food for that grey-garbed, white-tailed eagle to make a meal of, the greedy battle-hawk and that grey beast, the wolf in the wood. Never again was there such great carnage on this island, nor had so many people before this been felled by the sword’s blade]

Wulf appears in close proximity to wæl ‘slaughter’ in this passage, the latter of which could conceivably refer to both the slaughter enacted during the battle and the depredations of the animals mentioned directly beforehand. In this way, the wæl ‘slaughter’ committed by humans is blurred with the depredations of the Beasts of Battle, similar to the way in which the



80



81 82

Stephen Spotte, Societies of Wolves and Free-ranging Dogs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 136. Passio Albani, in Ælfric’s ‘Lives of Saints’, ed. and trans. by Skeat, p. 424. Dolores Warwick Frese, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: The Adulterous Woman Reconsidered’, Notre Dame English Journal, 15 (1983), 1–22 (p. 10).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts bloodthirsty wælwulfas ‘slaughter-wolves’, the Vikings, complete the Beast of Battle triad in Maldon.83 As in Brunanburh, in Wulf the act of slaughtering is conflated with the consumption of the corpse(s) that result, since the ambiguous verb aþecgan ‘tear up’ (lines 2 and 7) connotes both killing and devouring. The wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ (line 6) may therefore be taken as both the warriors who wish to kill Wulf and as the wolves who will consume the corpse which they leave behind. In this case, the term þreat (lines 2 and 7) may be interpreted as another wolf-warrior metaphor, a dual referent for ‘troop’ and ‘pack’ since there existed no separate Old English term for the latter.84 As with Wulf himself, the identities of the weras ‘men’ are suspended between human and wolf, opening up a variety of possible interpretations of the events presented in the poem: Wulf could be a wolf-like, outlawed man hunted by other wolf-like, hostile people; a wolf hunted by wolf-like people; a wolf hunted by other wolves; or an outcast human hunted by wolves, like the man who falls prey to the wolves in Maxims I.85 Whatever these weras ‘men’ are, their depredations appear to have forced Wulf to make widlastas ‘wide-wanderings’ (line 9) in order to escape them.86 This term echoes ‘the physically far-ranging paths, lastas, travelled by the speakers of other exile elegies’,87 and of the outlawed Cain of Genesis A, who flema scealt / widlast wrecan ‘must be an outlaw, an outcast on the distant track’ (lines 1020–1).88 Like the exile, however, wolves are also ‘wanderers’ of sorts, being ‘capable and inveterate travelers’ who are nomadic for much of the year, and even when staying in one place to raise their young, will travel significant distances to hunt.89 Similarly, all of the landscapes in which Wulf wanders – fenne ‘fen’ (line 5), iege / eglond ‘island’ (lines 4 and 5), and perhaps wuda ‘wood’ (line 17)90 – are ‘typical of the out-of-bounds space[s]’ inhabited by both wolves

See p. 27 above. See OED s.v. pack, n.1 [accessed 7 June 2019] for the etymology of the Modern English term. 85 See pp. 31–3 above. 86 Widlastas should probably be taken as a noun rather than an adjective here; see Klinck, ed., Elegies, p. 171. 87 Harlan-Haughey, p. 52. 88 Richard North, ‘Metre and Meaning in Wulf and Eadwacer: Signý Reconsidered’, in Loyal Letters: Studies in Medieval Alliterative Poetry and Prose, ed. by L. A. J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald (Groningen: Forsten, 1994), pp. 29–54 (p. 51). Given that Wulf may be trapped on an island, his widlastas ‘wide-wanderings’ may be metaphorical, emblematic of his outsider status. 89 Mech and Boitani, pp. 31–2. 90 It is unclear whether the wulf of this line refers to Wulf himself; see the section ‘Wulf’s Whelp: vargdropi and Wolf Pup’ below. 83 84

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer and wolfish outlaws.91 Terms related to woodland, as noted above, are frequently collocated with wulf, as in Maxims II where it is articulated that the wolf sceal ‘must’ abide on bearowe ‘in the wood’ (line 18), a locale in which outlaws were also thought to – and perhaps did – prowl.92 Fens, meanwhile, are ‘low land covered wholly or partially with shallow water, or subject to frequent inundations’,93 rendering them ‘a troubling and hybridized category that disrupts the two-part relationship between land and water’.94 Accordingly, those living in early medieval England had a ‘troubling’ relationship with such places; just as woodland was exploited in various ways while simultaneously being conceptualised as a place of wilderness where outlaws and wolves roamed,95 so too was fenland conceived of in terms apparently antithetical to the actual usage of this land. Fens were productive landscapes, ‘exploited for fishing and fowling, salt production, fuel from peat, and for pasturing animals during the growing season, when arable lands needed to be kept free of grazing animals’;96 ‘reclaimed’ land (fenland from which water had been drained or redirected) was also ‘especially fertile’ – and therefore, especially valuable – ‘because of its rich mineral content’.97 Thus, despite the difficulties associated with living in such places because of the varying water levels, which rendered travel more challenging and increased the risk of flooding, fenland did attract permanent residents.98 Yet although ‘the value perceived in the unique resources of the Fens led to efforts at reclamation, settlement and maintenance’, this landscape also ‘continued to symbolize […] a watery, liminal wilderness on the frontier between the good and the known, and the malevolent unknown’.99 Justin T. Noetzel ascribes this contradiction to the ‘hybridity of land and water [which] made the landscape hard to pass through physically and also difficult to comprehend intellectually’, such that fenland was considered ‘a monstrous entity and an isolating force’ even after land reclamation and settlement had occurred.100 This may be attributable to the 93 94 91 92

97 98 95 96



99



100

Blud, p. 342. See pp. 29–31 above. OED s.v. fen [accessed 14 September 2018]. Justin T. Noetzel, ‘Monster, Demon, Warrior: St. Guthlac and the Cultural Landscape of the Anglo-Saxon Fens’, Comitatus, 45 (2014), 105–31 (p. 114). See p. 30 above. Estes, p. 16. Noetzel, p. 120. Susan Oosthuizen, The Anglo-Saxon Fenland (Oxford: Windgather Press, 2017), p. 15. Della Hooke and Maren Clegg Hyer, ‘Introduction’, in Water and the Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. by Maren Clegg Hyer and Della Hooke (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), pp. 1–14 (p. 13). ‘Anglo-Saxon Fens’, p. 114.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts fact that most people did not live in or near fens,101 the conception of these areas in such terms thus ‘reflect[ing] a cultural construction of the area as seen by people who lived elsewhere’, to whom the fens appeared ‘impenetrable’ and ‘look[ed] like wilderness’.102 Not only this, but ‘in the Christian world, the wastes and wildernesses of Britain were readily adopted as fearful places inhabited by devils, perhaps replacing the desert of Middle Eastern scriptures with the nearest European equivalents of wood and fenland’, landscapes ‘which might test the faith of those true to God’ and which hermits would therefore ‘frequently seek out’, such as ‘the eastern Fenlands of Crowland in the case of St Guthlac’.103 Whatever the reason, fenland retained a place in the literature of early medieval England as a fearful, foul landscape, as articulated in the vernacular translation of Aldhelm’s De creatura in Riddle 40, where a fen is described as swearte ‘dark’, yfle adelan stinceð ‘its filth stinking of evil’ (lines 31–2). This gloomy environment, a lonely location unwelcoming to human inhabitants and hence conceptualised as ‘a space of exile, danger and isolation from humanity, representative of the borders of civilisation’, which ‘created a sense of unease’,104 was a place ‘suitable only for prisoners, exiles, monsters, and demons’,105 liminal creatures who reflected this liminal landscape. This is articulated in Maxims II, for example, in which ‘the thief and the demon or monster are categorized together as peripheral creatures who dwell outside of the community and threaten the values that hold Anglo-Saxon culture together’:106 Þeof sceal gangan þystrum wederum. / Þyrs sceal on fenne gewunian, / ana innan lande ‘The thief must move through dark weather. The monster must abide in the fen, alone in this land’ (lines 42–4). Similarly, in Wulf itself ‘the few details we are given of the action’s setting contain no clear sign of human habitation or cultivation’,107 only that it is roamed by wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’, Wulf, the speaker, and the hwelp ‘pup’, all with shifting, slippery identities. In these tracts of watery wilderness, islands were the only solid ground and the only place where, above the waterline, settlement was possible.108 Surrounded by often virtually impassable swampy marshland

101



102 103



104

107 108 105 106

Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley, ‘Fens and Frontiers’, in Water and the Environment, ed. by Clegg Hyer and Hooke, pp. 68–88 (p. 70). Estes, p. 16. Della Hooke, ‘Rivers, Wells and Springs in Anglo-Saxon England: Water in Sacred and Mystical Contexts’, in Water and the Environment, ed. by Clegg Hyer and Hooke, pp. 107–35 (p. 117). Lindy Brady, ‘Echoes of Britons on a Fenland Frontier in the Old English Andreas’, Review of English Studies NS, 61 (2010), 669–89 (p. 674). Noetzel, p. 105. Ibid., p. 110. Orton, p. 242. Oosthuizen, p. 15.

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer and bog,109 such islands thus became ‘physical embodiment[s] of mental or spiritual isolation […], the province[s] of’ those who were ‘cut off from the world’.110 This is certainly true of Wulf’s islands, which are fenne biworpen ‘encircled by fen’ and fæst (line 5), the latter term, meaning ‘that which can resist attack or access: strong, fortified, secure from intrusion’,111 indicating the impassability of the surrounding fen. Of course, although the flooded fen keeps intruders out, it also prevents escape from whatever might lurk on the firmer land. Thus, in Wulf the ‘fastness’ of the fen surrounding the islands serves not as fortification which keeps such monsters out, but as a barrier trapping the speaker and/or Wulf in with the bloodthirsty band of wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ which occupy one (or both) of the islands. It was not only monsters, criminals, and demons who were thought to inhabit this type of landscape, however, with the fens also home to lupine residents. East Anglia, for example, an area comprising much fenland, was ruled until the eighth century by the Wuffingas, whose dynasty name means ‘the kin of the wolf’.112 One of the Wuffing’s supposed descendants was King Edmund, whose passiones by Abbo and Ælfric, set in the immensarum paludum uligine ‘immense tract of marsh and fen’ of East Anglia, are structured around wolves.113 The name of the legendary Norse wolf Fenrir, meanwhile, means ‘fen-dweller’,114 while Beowulf’s wolf-like Grendelkin, who are outlaws from God and humankind alike, inhabit a landscape not only encircled by wulfhleoþu ‘wolf-slopes’ (line 1358), but which is a place of fen ond fæsten ‘fen and fastness’ (line 104), a fenhopu

109

112 110 111



113 114

See, for example, the passage in Asser’s Vita Ælfredi describing Athelney, a place quod permaxima gronna paludosissima et intransmeabili et aquis undique circumcingitur ‘surrounded by swampy, impassable and extensive marshland and groundwater on every side’, which ad quod nullo modo aliquis accedere potest nisi cauticis, aut etiam per unum pontem, qui inter duas (alias) arces operosa protelatione constructus est ‘cannot be reached in any way except by punts or by a causeway which has been built by protracted labour between two fortresses’; W. H. Stevenson, ed., Asser’s ‘Life of King Alfred’ Together with the Annals of Saint Neots Erroneously Ascribed to Asser, rev. by Dorothy Whitelock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 79–80, and Asser, ‘Life of King Alfred’, in Alfred the Great: Asser’s ‘Life of King Alfred’ and Other Contemporary Sources, trans. by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 65–110 (p. 103) respectively. Blud, p. 339. DOE s.v. fæst [accessed 14 September 2018]. Pinner, p. 222. Anderson argues that the use of the phrase fenne biworpen in Wulf could be ‘a deliberate East Anglian touch’; ‘Deor, Wulf and Eadwacer, and The Soul’s Address’, p. 224. Winterbottom, p. 69, and Hervey, p. 13. See chapter four below. Andy Orchard, ed., Cassell Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend (London: Cassell, 1997), s.v. Fenrir, p. 42.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts ‘fen-enclosed’ (line 764) fenfreoðo ‘fen-refuge’ (line 851) with fenhleoðu ‘fenslopes’ (line 820), through which winds a frecne fengelad ‘perilous fen-path’ (line 1359).115 With its alliterative pattern associating ‘fastness’ with the fen, the phrase fen ond fæsten ‘fen and fastness (line 104) echoes Wulf’s fifth line: Fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen ‘That island is fast, encircled by fen’. Indeed, like Wulf, who makes widlastas ‘wide-wanderings’ through the fens (line 9), Grendel also wræclastas træd ‘trod exile-paths’ (line 1352) through the fenland surrounding his mere. This evidence may attest to the existence of a traditional association between wolfish creatures and fenland in the culture of early medieval England. While this association could originate in mythological material (hence ‘Fenrir’), it is equally possible that it is based in ecological knowledge, as the existence of wolf-related ‘hill- and place-names in the east of England, in areas which were fen or carr before drainage, may point to the early presence of wolves in just this type of terrain’.116 Such toponyms are also found in watery areas elsewhere; two neighbouring villages in Cumbria, Meathop and Ulpha, are ‘situated near a large expanse of raised bog’, as reflected in the meaning of the suffix of Meathop: ‘a valley; a remote enclosed space; a piece of enclosed land in a fen; an enclosure in marsh or moor’.117 Wolves appear to have frequented this area, judging by the name of nearby Ulpha, a toponym comprising the Old Norse elements ulfr ‘wolf’ and haugr ‘natural height, a hill’.118 Similarly, the name of a village in Warwickshire, Wolvey, comprises the elements wulf and eg ‘island’, the latter of which, ‘in ancient settlement-names, most frequently refers to dry ground surrounded by marsh’, and in ‘late OE names: well-watered land’.119 Fenland such as this may have come to be associated with wolves because these areas, with their ‘seasonal patterns of pasture combined with dispersed settlement patterns and poor communications’, might have ‘enabled wild fauna’ such as wolves ‘to find relative shelter’,120 especially since their ‘eradication from […] marshland before it was drained would be very difficult’.121

The Grendel-mere which is situated within this fenland is itself mirrored by the hell-mouth depicted in Blickling Homily XVI, a place likewise inhabited by wolf-like creatures; see pp. 50–1 above. 116 Orton, p. 242. 117 ‘Meathop and Ulpha’, Key to English Place-names (Nottingham: Institute for Name-Studies, University of Nottingham, 2019) [accessed 16 November 2019]. 118 Ibid. 119 ‘Wolvey’, Key to English Place-names [accessed 16 November 2019]. For more on lupine toponyms for fen islands, see Orton, p. 243. See also Aybes and Yalden’s list of wolf place-names; ‘Place-Name Evidence’, pp. 206–10. 120 Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 46. 121 Anthony Dent, Lost Beasts of Britain (London: Harrap, 1974), p. 128. 115

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer Wulf echoes the mutable fenland landscape which he traverses on his widlastas ‘wide-wanderings’, his dual human-wolf identity reflected in this strange environment which, like him, is neither one thing nor the other. In this way, Wulf is akin to the outlawed man of Maxims I who is rejected by both wolves and humans alike. Like this man, who is murdered by the felafæcne deor ‘very deceitful animals’ (line 147) as a result,122 Wulf’s life is threatened by the wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ whose identities also fluctuate between wolf and human. To escape this savage group, Wulf is forced to flee beyond the fringes of human civilisation and to penetrate ever deeper into the wilderness, making widlastas ‘wide-wanderings’ through the fen where, like the outlaw, he becomes even more liminal as he mirrors and is mirrored by the mutable landscape. Although Wulf’s child is termed a hwelp ‘pup’ (line 11) – a word that has been considered analogous to the Norse vargdropi123 – one might question why neither Wulf nor the weras ‘men’ who hunt him are termed weargas ‘criminals’ or described as wearg ‘accursed’ or ‘outcast’, if the shifting boundary between wolves and outlaws is indeed the subject of the poem.124 Perhaps, in a reversal of the lupus in fabula proverb (according to which, to ‘talk about the wolf may bring him’),125 the speaker invokes and inverses the taboo on the name of the lupine lover with whom she longs to reunite, repeating and emphasising it through alliteration (lines 9, 13, and 17) in an attempt to summon him. Equally, in the case of those whom she does not want to summon, the weras ‘men’, she avoids invoking the taboo by not explicitly naming them wulfas ‘wolves’. In any case, the appearance of the nominal or adjectival wearg would significantly diminish the riddling effect of the poem, pointing too clearly to its play upon the conceptual indistinction between wolves and outlawed felons. Instead, the ambiguous language and imagery never lets one be certain of Wulf’s nature. He is at once both a wolfen outlaw and a lone wolf, while the weras ‘men’ who hunt him are at once a band of wolf-hunters and outlaw-hunters, as well as a pack of wolves. Wulf does not allow for any of these interpretations to be accepted as the definitive ‘answer’ to this riddle-like song: ‘such is the skill and intention of the poet’, all of these interpretative possibilities ‘are simultaneously correct’.126 124 122 123



125 126

See pp. 31–3 above. See p. 114 below. Anderson argues that Wulf should be associated with Soul and Body II (which appears shortly before the former in the Exeter Book) based on the animal and outlaw-related imagery common to both, including the use of the noun wearg in Soul and Body II (line 22); see ‘Deor, Wulf and Eadwacer, and The Soul’s Address’, p. 221. Abbott, p. 121. John M. Fanagan, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: A Solution to the Critics’ Riddle’, Neophilologus, 60 (1976), 130–7 (p. 132).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts A Wolfen and Outlawed Speaker Although the speaker does use the term minum ‘my’ of the leod ‘people’, like Wulf she appears to be an outcast from this group, as ‘the markers of exception and exclusion that indicate Wulf’s separation also distinguish the speaker, neither with nor without her people’.127 She ‘links herself with [Wulf] […] by comparing their similar but separate situations’128 – Wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre ‘Wulf is on an island, I on another’ (line 4) – and, by making unclear to which island she refers as fenne biworpen ‘encircled by fen’ (line 5), suggests the possibility that she herself has been exiled to another island in the fen.129 She may also remain upon her home-island, ‘an outcast among her own, who shun her’ since,130 even as she states her belonging to this group the speaker enacts her separation from them in her diction, with ‘the possessive adjective […] divided from its noun’ in the phrase Leodum […] minum ‘My people’ (line 1),131 a distinct contrast to her possessiveness of Wulf (Wulf, min Wulf ‘Wulf, my Wulf’, line 13). Similarly, the referent of us in the repeated lines Ungelic(e) is us (lines 3 and 8) might refer not only to the speaker and her people, but also to herself and Wulf, meaning ‘We are different [from them]’ and suggesting that ‘she does not identify with her own’.132 Indeed, the speaker’s relationship with Wulf may be the reason for her outlawry, that by associating herself with an outsider she has become one herself;133 since un- can also serve as an intensifier, this phrase can be taken to mean ‘“We (Wulf and I) are too much the same”’,134 the speaker ‘too much like the “wolf” she

127 128

131 129 130



132 133



134

Blud, p. 340. Fiona Gameson and Richard Gameson, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife’s Lament, and the Discovery of the Individual in Old English Verse’, in Studies in English Language and Literature: “Doubt Wisely”, Papers in Honor of E. G. Stanley, ed. by M. J. Toswell and E. M. Tyler (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 457–74 (p. 463). Baker, ‘Ambiguity’, p. 50. Nash, p. 101. Peter S. Baker, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: A Classroom Edition’, Old English Newsletter, 16.2 (1983), appendix, 1–8 (p. 5). Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 374. This is proclaimed an offense punishable by death in the laws of Alfred, in which it is decreed that a person who protects an outlaw will give up both their property and their life; ‘Laws of Alfred’, in Laws, ed. and trans. by Attenborough, pp. 62–92 (p. 64). Likewise, according to the laws of Æthelstan, if a person pepercerit vel eundem firmaverit ‘spares or harbours’ a convicted thief on the run, he indignus sit omnium quæ habebit et vitæ suæ, sicut fur ‘shall forfeit his life and all that he has as if he were a thief himself’; ‘IV Æthelstan’, in ibid., pp. 148–50. Carole A. Hough, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer: A Note on Ungelic’, American Notes and Queries, 8.3 (1995), 3–6 (p. 5). See ibid., pp. 3–5 for discussion of the use of -un as an ‘intensifier’.

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer addresses’.135 Like her lover, who is neither one thing nor the other, she too is both ‘connected and yet disconnected from those around her, […] becom[ing] the counterpart he leaves behind – a “wolf-headed” woman’.136 Like Wulf, she too appears to be living in fear of the depredations of these weras ‘men’. Although the phrase mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde ‘the battle-bold encircled me in his boughs’ (line 11) could refer to Wulf and his animal-like shoulders, it is also possible that this person is one of the wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ who hunts the speaker like a wolf(ish outlaw) in a situation parallel to Wulf’s. The term bog ‘may be taken as dative plural, not of bōg (bōh), “arm”, “bough”, but of boga with short o, which denotes curved objects in Old English, most commonly the weapon, “bow”’, and the line mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde (line 11) may therefore also be interpreted as ‘[the battle-bold] afflicted me with his bows’.137 This apparently ‘deliberate ambiguity’, which ‘support[s] interpretation both as “afflicted me with his bows” (bogum) and as “encircled me with his arms” (bōgum)’, would ‘help to explain the speaker’s mixed feelings […] about the beaducafa’s actions towards her’:138 wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað ‘was joyful to me, but it was painful to me too’ (line 12). With se beaducafa ‘the battle-bold [one]’ (line 11) potentially referring simultaneously to Wulf and one of the wolfish weras,139 the contrast between ‘the language of war’ and ‘the language of the physical expression of love or lust’ suggests that the speaker is wyn ‘joyful’ when enwrapped in Wulf’s ‘boughs’, but her experience with the enemy’s ‘bows’ is lað ‘painful’.140 Bog also means ‘branch of a tree or bush, bough’,141 and could therefore here refer to ‘the wattling or logs of a house or of cage bars, or even of a home conceived of as cage’, especially given that ‘when [the speaker] has “boughs” about her […], they serve as a constraint in comparison with the widlastum wenum “wide-ranging hopes” of Wulf’.142 The speaker might therefore be a captive of her people, imprisoned in a cage or wooden

137 138

Blud, p. 338. Ibid., p. 340. Orton, p. 233. Ibid., pp. 233–4, quoting from Fanagan, ‘Solution to the Critics’ Riddle’, pp. 132–3. 139 As seen above, the term beaducafa could be ‘a product of the same analogy between warrior and beast as is expressed in such wolf metaphors as wælwulf [“slaughter-wolf”] and hildewulf [“battle-wolf”]’ (Orton, p. 236), rendering both Wulf and the bowman wolfish. 140 Fanagan, pp. 132–3. 141 DOE s.v. bōg [accessed 11 June 2019]. 142 Osborn, ‘Text and Context’, pp. 176 and 178 respectively. 135 136

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts building,143 though it is equally conceivable that she is a wolf caught in a wulfpytt ‘wolf-pit’, a hole which was concealed with branches and baited with food used for trapping wolves.144 Along with the two other possible interpretations of bog, this suggests that the line mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde ‘when the battle-bold encircled me in his boughs’ / ‘when the battle-bold afflicted me with his bows’ (line 11) can be interpreted both as the speaker’s remembrances of happier times in Wulf’s embrace, as well as a description of her current situation, in which she is hunted or trapped like a wolf(ish outlaw).145 Whether she is hunted by, captured by, or outcast from her people, the speaker’s preoccupation with food (Wulf, min Wulf, wena me þine / seoce gedydon, þine seldcymas, / murnende mod, nales meteliste ‘Wulf, my Wulf! My hopes of you have made me sick; your seldom-comings, my anxious mind, not at all lack of food’, lines 13–15)146 also iterates her ‘exclu[sion] from the general good fortune’ of society,147 much like the outlaw for whom a ‘primary concern is where to get food and what kind of food may be available at any given point in [their] environment’.148 The wolf,

See Michael D. J. Bintley, Trees in the Religions of Early Medieval England, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 26 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), p. 144. 144 Wulfpytt constitutes 18 per cent of English place-names containing wulf, and ‘there is ample evidence, world-wide, that a baited pit was a standard way to kill Wolves’; Aybes and Yalden, pp. 204–5. Likewise, ‘the use of drives, whether towards hunters with bows or towards pits, seems to have been the most common method of hunting deer and potentially wolves in medieval Britain’; Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 100. Since such pits were often baited, perhaps nales meteliste ‘not at all lack of food’ (line 15) is an ironic reference to the fact that the speaker has ample food, but at the expense of her freedom. 145 This might be considered similar to the way in which the speakers of The Wanderer and The Seafarer reminisce about their old lives while they suffer exile. 146 The phrase nales meteliste ‘not at all lack of food’ (line 15) is problematic, as it could constitute ‘a guilty acknowledgement that [the speaker] suffers less than her lost beloved, since she can eat and live in physical comfort’ (Harlan-Haughey, p. 52), or that ‘longing for Wulf has made her ill, not lack of food’; Sonja Daniëlli, ‘Wulf, Min Wulf: An Eclectic Analysis of the WolfMan’, Neophilologus, 91 (2007), 505–24 (p. 521). On the other hand, it could be ‘not […] an arbitrary comparison, but […] an implication that the woman had actually been compelled by her circumstances to go short of food’; P. J. Frankis, ‘Deor and Wulf and Eadwacer: Some Conjectures’, Medium Ævum, 31 (1962), 161–75 (p. 172 n.33). Indeed, as Klinck observes, ‘the reference to lack of food seems rather pointless unless the woman has actually suffered this hardship’; Elegies, p. 174. 147 Orton, p. 244. 148 Harlan-Haughey, p. 52. 143

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer meanwhile, ‘was supposed traditionally to be constantly hungry’,149 such as the wolf of Maxims I that hungre heofeð ‘laments its hunger’ (line 149).150 Wulf’s seldcymas ‘seldom-comings’ (line 14) are directly associated with the speaker’s meteliste ‘lack of food’ (line 15), perhaps suggesting that at one time he had brought her food but has not done so recently, likely having been prevented from doing so by the wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ on his trail. The speaker does not seem able to find food herself, her stasis (ic […] sæt, ‘I sat’, line 10) emphasised in contrast with Wulf’s widlastas ‘wide-wanderings’ (line 9), again suggesting that she is an outcast or captive who is denied food,151 or that she is a wolf trapped in a cage or a pit, slowly starving to death. That she has a hwelp ‘pup’ may also prevent her from travelling; after giving birth, female wolves remain in the den to care for their new-born young while pack members – and especially the father – bring them food.152 Perhaps a search for food for his mate and pup has compelled Wulf to undertake his widlastas ‘wide-wanderings’; ‘wolves may travel as far as 48 km (29 mi) from the den or pups to obtain food’, especially in ‘extensive marshes and […] swamps’ such as those in which Wulf and the speaker live, since ‘ungulate prey are not present’ in these areas.153

149



150



151 152



153

Keough, p. 556 n.2. Perhaps meteliste ‘lack of food’ is thus ‘denied by the speaker as the cause of her sickness as if confounding natural expectations’ about wolf behaviour; Orton, p. 255. One is also reminded of the saying ‘to keep the wolf from the door’; given that the reference to meteliste ‘lack of food’ (line 15) appears directly before the reference to her child, perhaps the speaker’s hunger means that her hwelp ‘pup’ (line 16) has also gone unfed, and that the wulf ‘wolf’ bearing him to the woods (a metaphor for death) is hunger itself. Adams makes a similar point, describing the wulf ‘wolf’ of line 17 as a ‘conventional figure for hard times’; ‘“Wulf and Eadwacer”: An Interpretation’, p. 4. According to Isidore, wolves famem diu portant ‘endure hunger for a long time’; Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, XII.ii.24, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. Nash, p. 101. Packard, p. 50. The description of the hwelp ‘pup’ as earne (line 16), if emended to eargne ‘weak’ or ‘inert’ (see BT s.v. earg, p. 233), might suggest that it is very young, as ‘wolves carry their cubs in their mouths’, and ‘the more weak – earne – they are the more likely are they to be carried’, as is the hwelp ‘pup’ in these lines; Fanagan, p. 135. Mech and Boitani, pp. 31 and 23 respectively. Birds and small mammals were available to wolves inhabiting wetlands (Dent, p. 124), although supporting a lactating female and growing pup on these smaller species would require numerous kills and more time spent hunting. Livestock was also grazed in the fens at least seasonally, which perhaps provided alternative prey that was easier to take and which, given the ‘dispersed settlement patterns and poor communications’ in fenland settlements (Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 46), may have carried relatively low risk. That the speaker has gone hungry would suggest that livestock are not found in Wulf’s fenland, however, or that Wulf

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Unable to go with him – whether because she must remain with their hwelp ‘pup’ or because she is physically prevented from it – the speaker dogode ‘dogged’ Wulf’s widlastas ‘wide-wanderings’ in her mind (line 9). Though often emended to hogode154 (hogian possessing a wide range of meanings, broadly centred around ‘thinking’ or ‘considering’),155 the hapax dogode could be ‘derived from docga [“dog”]’, a term ‘recorded twice in place names as doggene and once in the form docgena as a gloss on canum [“dogs”]’.156 The verb *dogian in Wulf might therefore mean ‘“pursued like a dog”’ or ‘dogged’,157 suggesting that ‘although she is […] sitting alone, the speaker is simultaneously the hound swift on [Wulf’s] track’,158 the word ‘chosen, perhaps even invented, as a verb form meant to continue the close attention to the vocabulary suggesting animals and their behavior’.159 Just like the wolf she ‘dogs’, then, the speaker’s identity oscillates between both lone wolf and outlawed human. Yet, since she exists in ‘a strange suspension between community and solitude’ which ‘evokes a different kind of exile, distinguished from the settled, socialized sphere in a way that is far less clear-cut’, she is ‘perhaps, consequently, rather more wolfish’ than even Wulf himself.160 Likewise, by nature of her role as the narrator of the poem she becomes more liminal than her lupine lover; that she speaks makes her human(like), and yet ‘her diction […] tends toward animal and exile words’.161 Similarly, as an outcast she is a figure ‘without opportunity of dialogue, forbidden “to exchange words”’ with her people and thus ‘rendered speechless’ among them, ‘a characteristic associating [her] with the beast which lacks the gift of speech’.162 Thus, just as the speaker’s identity is suspended between silent animal/outlaw and speaking human, the poem itself exists in a state of flux between human speech and animal noise; between song and silence. does not dare risk taking domestic animals for fear of the humans (perhaps the wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’) who own them. 154 See Klinck, ed., Elegies, p. 172. 155 DOE s.v. hogian [accessed 13 August 2018]. Here, a separate definition for the term’s appearance in Wulf is listed: ‘to think with hope about, concentrate hopefully on (a subject uppermost in one’s thoughts)’; ibid. 156 Klinck, ‘Animal Imagery’, p. 8. 157 Ibid. 158 Osborn, ‘Text and Context’, pp. 181–2. 159 Marijane Osborn, ‘Dogode in Wulf and Eadwacer and King Alfred’s Hunting Metaphors’, American Notes and Queries, 13.4 (2000), 3–9 (p. 7). This is supported by the fact that ‘the hypothetical miscopying of an h to a d is not an obvious transcriptional error in the Anglo-Saxon graphic alphabet’; Gameson and Gameson, p. 459. 160 Blud, p. 342. 161 Harlan-Haughey, p. 52. 162 Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 4.

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer Uncontainable within categories, this giedd ‘song’ is not gesomnad ‘whole’ nor geador ‘together’ (line 19), but tosliteð ‘torn apart’ (line 18). Not a duet but the broken and disjointed reotiges ‘tearful’ (line 10) song of the speaker alone, this solo melody is a product of the isolation of this outcast woman, her song ‘slit’ since she can ‘exchange words’ with neither her people,163 nor her lover. With reotig ‘speak[ing] not of quiet grief and decorous tears, but of wild lamentation’ and of ‘wailing’,164 her song is (akin to) that of the lone wolf, a melody which ‘var[ies] from scarcely modulated (“flat” howls) to highly modulated, sometimes with discontinuities in pitch (“breaking” howls)’,165 reflected in this poem’s half-lines and missing syllables.166 During group choruses, on the other hand, pack members harmonise to create a ‘song’, which may serve to solidify ‘social bonds’.167 Perhaps the speaker and Wulf have howled back and forth in a broken conversation between lone wolves (Gehyrest þu […]? ‘Do you hear […]?’, line 16)168 but, unable to harmonise as a pack, their bond and giedd ‘song’ are tosliteð ‘torn apart’, each næfre gesomnad ‘never [quite] whole’ (line 18).

Wulf’s Whelp: vargdropi and Wolf Pup Wulf’s hwelp ‘pup’, his child born of the speaker,169 appears to have inherited an ambiguous, dual identity as both a persecuted wolf and an outlawed human from its mother and father. This much is obvious from its name: hwelp is found in numerous toponyms from early medieval England that are ‘accepted as referring to Wolf cubs’ given that they are



163 164



165

168 166 167



169

Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 4. Baker, ‘Ambiguity’, p. 47. This term is ‘related to reotan “to bewail, lament”’, the ‘idea behind’ which ‘is not tears, but sound’, as indicated by its usage in a ‘noisy passage’ of Christ II: Þeodegsa bið / hlud gehyred bi heofonwoman, / cwaniendra cirm, cerge reotað / fore onsyne eces deman ‘There will be loud, mighty terror heard, along with the sound of judgement from heaven, a clamour of wailing; the sorrowful will weep before the sight of the eternal judge’ (lines 833–6); ibid. Harrington and Asa, p. 75. In her second identity as an outcast human, perhaps the speaker’s grief has driven her to such emotional extremes that her reotig ‘tearful’ outburst resembles the howling of a lone wolf. See p. 118 below. Harrington and Asa, pp. 75–6. ‘Wolves, when separated from their packmates, howl readily’ (Harrington and Asa, p. 75), and ‘loneliness is the emotion most often mentioned’ in relation to the howling of lone wolves; Lopez, p. 39. The arguments in favour of the suggestion that the hwelp ‘pup’ is the child of Wulf and the speaker are outlined above at pp. 95–6.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts found ‘in likely habitats’ where wolves might have lived.170 The term could therefore be literal, although within the context of the poem it may also function as a metaphor analogous to the Norse vargdropi, the word used for the child of the wolfen outlaw (vargr).171 Earne (line 16), the adjective describing the hwelp ‘pup’ in the lines Uncerne earne hwelp / bireð wulf to wuda ‘Our wretched pup is borne to the woods by a wolf’ (lines 16–17), lends itself to both interpretations. This term, with its similarities to the Old Norse adjective armr (‘poor’; ‘wretched, wicked’),172 might evoke the wretched status of the outlaw who no longer enjoys the benefits of belonging to a community, such as that endured by the vargr mentioned in the Sigrdrífumál:173 armr er vára vargr ‘wretched is the pledge-criminal’ (st. 23).174 It can also be taken as ‘a masculine singular dative of accompaniment’ of the noun earn ‘eagle’, meaning the lines Uncerne earne hwelp / bireð wulf to wuda (lines 16–17) may be translated as ‘The wolf, accompanied by the eagle, bears our whelp to the woods’.175 The combination of these two animals evokes the Beast of Battle topos, suggesting that these animals drag the hwelp ‘pup’ into the forest to slaughter it and feast upon its corpse. Earne may also be a scribal error for both earmne ‘miserable’, and eargne ‘cowardly, craven, timid’.176 Earm is a fitting description for both a wolf pup in the woods and outlaw; the same term appears in the passage referring to the wolf in Maxims II (Wulf sceal on bearowe, / earm anhaga ‘The wolf must be in the wood, a wretched loner’, lines 18–19), the pairing of the term with anhaga here mirroring the description of the eponymous exile of The Wanderer as a(n) earmne anhogan ‘wretched loner’ (line 40). Eargne, sometimes found ‘glossing or rendering fugax / profugus “likely to run away, timid, fleeing”’,177 would also be a fitting description for an outlaw’s offspring or a new-born wolf pup. As well as a Beast of Battle, the wulf which carries the hwelp ‘pup’ to the woods can be taken as one of the wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ who will aþecgan ‘tear’ Wulf apart (line 6), since the verb toslitan ‘tear’ (line 18),

170 171

174

172

173

177 175 176

Aybes and Yalden, p. 211. See Phillip Pulsiano and Kirsten Wolf, ‘The “Hwelp” in Wulf and Eadwacer’, English Language Notes, 28 (1991), 1–9. See p. 37 above for more on the vargdropi. Cleasby and Vigfusson, Icelandic-English Dictionary, s.v. armr, adj., p. 25. North, ‘Signý Reconsidered’, p. 47. William Henry Schofield compares Wulf and the hwelp ‘pup’ to Sigmund (the ‘head of the race of the Wolfings’) and Sinfjolti, the outlawed werewolves of the Vǫlsunga saga; see ‘Signy’s Lament’, PMLA, 17 (1902), 262–95 (p. 264). North built upon this interpretation in his ‘Signý Reconsidered’. See p. 36 above for more on the Vǫlsunga saga. Fry, p. 261. DOE s.v. earm adj. and s.v. earg [accessed 15 September 2018] respectively. DOE s.v. earg [accessed 15 September 2018].

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer ‘suggestive of a wolf’s rending and tearing’,178 provides a ‘chilling hint of “easy” (eaþe, [line] 18) separation by bestial violence, an echo of the explicit theme in the opening lines’,179 suggesting that Wulf’s child may be subject to the same treatment as its father. Like his father, a wolf and outlaw hunted by both humans and other wolves, this hwelp ‘pup’ is an outlaw persecuted by a society in which he is no longer welcome, and a wolf whose pack a human community wants to eradicate from its land. Simultaneously, he is a wolf pup unwelcome among his peers, either as a new addition to a rival pack,180 or as a competitor to the offspring of his pack’s mating pair.181 The wulf which bears him to the woods may also be metaphorical, therefore, a symbol of the inherited outcast status of a creature fated to join its father in the wood, the traditional home of both persecuted wolf and outlaw.182 Likely as a consequence of its inherited exclusion from the communities of both wolves and humans, the hwelp ‘pup’ has apparently been sentenced to death. Under threat from the depredations of humans and wolves alike (the wolfish wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ and the wulf of line 17), the hwelp ‘pup’ is thus as friendless and vulnerable as the Wineleas, wonsælig mon ‘Friendless, miserable man’ of Maxims I who takes the wolf as his friend (lines 146–51). Like this man – as well as its father – this hwelp ‘pup’ is suspended in a ‘zone of indistinction’ between wolf and human.183 Such a creature is easily tosliteð ‘torn apart’ (line 18), since it was never ‘whole’ to begin with.

178



179



180



181



182 183

Klinck, ed., Elegies, p. 176. Toslitan ‘tear’ echoes slitan ‘tear’ in Maxims I (line 147), where the enactors of the verb are wolves; Pat Belanoff, ‘Ides … geomrode giddum: The Old English Female Lament’, in Medieval Woman’s Song: Cross-cultural Approaches, ed. by Anne L. Klinck and Ann Marie Rasmussen (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 29–46 (p. 43). Anderson, p. 212. Although, strictly speaking, the subject of the verb toslitan is the giedd ‘song’ of line 19, the presence of this word in the lines directly following the mention of the hwelp ‘pup’ (lines 16–17), and the fact that both the hwelp ‘pup’ and the torn-apart giedd ‘song’ are products of the speaker’s union with Wulf, suggest that the wulf which bears it to the forest is not well-intentioned towards this child: ‘whatever belongs to the lady and Wulf together may be destroyed: their love, their child, and probably Wulf himself’; Daniëlli, p. 522. ‘Wolves have evolved to attack competitors when they are most likely to impact their reproduction, with the highest success during the denning season when they attack a rival pack’s den’; Douglas W. Smith et al., ‘Infanticide in Wolves: Seasonality of Mortalities and Attacks at Dens Support Evolution of Territoriality’, Journal of Mammalogy, 96 (2015), 1174–83 (p. 1180). Wulf is an outsider to the pack, the speaker’s people; the hwelp ‘pup’ has not been born to the breeding male and female. Peter J. McLeod found that ‘the killing of pups born to subordinate females by [breeding] females may be a common occurrence in both captive and free-ranging wolf packs’; ‘Infanticide by Female Wolves’, Canadian Journal of Zoology, 68 (1990), 402–4 (p. 402). See pp. 29–31 above. Agamben, p. 109.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Wulfas, or weras, in the Story? Although Wulf’s name ‘may point to associations with a wolf […] in the sense of that he is perceived as someone dangerous and threatening’,184 and although he, the speaker, and their hwelp ‘pup’ are all lupine, it is the weras ‘men’ who appear to be the true wolves of this poem. It is they, not Wulf, who are wælreowe ‘bloodthirsty’; it is they who ‘wish to devour him (aþecgan)’;185 and it is they who (according to one interpretation) toslitað ‘tear apart’ the hwelp ‘pup’. Likewise, although ‘there is an interesting overlap between Wulfstan’s rhetoric [on the werewulf] and Wulf and Eadwacer’s poetics’, both texts ‘shar[ing] the image of the shunned wolf […], the one who threatens the community’, and the depiction of ‘the fate of the wretched […] to be torn, slit, rent apart’ (slitan),186 it is not Wulf, but the weras, who possess an affinity with this figure. It is not he who threatens the weras but the weras who threaten him, the speaker, and the hwelp ‘pup’. It is Wulf and his family who must be ‘watchful’ of the weras ‘men’, like Wulfstan’s hyrdes ‘shepherd’,187 while it is the weras ‘men’ who, in carrying out the ‘slitting’ (line 18) and ‘devouring’ (lines 2 and 7), reflect the ‘menacing, madly consuming werewulf’.188 Wulf’s speaker thus ‘shows the lawful group as more animalistic – and potentially cannibalistic – than the bestial outlaw himself’, presenting ‘an ironic reversal of the usual imagery of the outlaw as bloodthirsty and bestial’,189 with the weras ‘men’ as ‘hunters, and Wulf [as well as the speaker and hwelp ‘pup’] the prey’.190 In this sense, the latter three characters are more akin to the figure of the ‘exile’ according to the above definition,191 or to the ‘sympathetic werewolf’ as ‘an innocent victim’ who ‘retains his human sense and reason under his transformed pelt’, as opposed to the speaker’s people, who are ‘constitutional’ werewolves, men who have ‘become[] entirely wolf, whose bod[ies] and soul[s] are polluted by bestiality’.192



Magennis, p. 69. Ibid., p. 70. Likewise, we are given no indication that Wulf is deserving of the persecution he (and his family) suffers under this group. Rather, it seems that ‘the reason for this hostility’ is simply ‘the enmity of the group towards an outsider’; Orton, p. 244. 186 Blud, p. 339. 187 Because of this, and since eadwacer may be an epithet for Wulf, the ‘relation of wulf and wacen [“watchfulness”]’ need not be ‘dichotomous’; ibid. 188 Ibid. 189 Harlan-Haughey, pp. 50–1. 190 Baker, ‘Ambiguity’, pp. 45–6. 191 See p. 21 above. 192 Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 349. 184 185

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer In this case the lines Ungelic(e) is us, often translated as ‘It is different with us’ or similar (lines 3 and 8), might be interpreted as derogatory comments upon the nature of the weras ‘men’, the speaker emphasising their difference (ungelic) from herself and Wulf: ‘We [the speaker, Wulf, and their child] are different from them [her people]’,193 the implication being: ‘we [Wulf and the speaker] do not kill’; ‘we are not wolfish’; ‘we are not wælreowe’; ‘we are not criminals’; or ‘we’re not so wicked’.194 The human/ wolf slippage, she demonstrates, can go both ways: weras ‘men’ can be more lupine than ‘wolves’ (Wulf, the speaker, and hwelp ‘pup’), the former savage, bloodthirsty predators despite apparently being weras ‘men’, the latter their helpless victims despite being wolf(ish) beings. Ungelic(e) is us: ‘We are wolves/outlaws, but we are different; the men who hunt us are the true wolves’.

Conclusion: A Speech-stealing Wulf? Mirroring the indistinct natures of the characters it portrays, Wulf itself is mutable, ambiguous, and resistant to neat categorisation, much like the riddles which it precedes in the Exeter Book. Unlike the riddles, however, this poem does not ‘beg[] for solution’.195 Rather, like the paradoxical giedd ‘song’ of its final lines, which næfre gesomnad wæs ‘was never whole’ (lines 18–19), the poem is itself a song that can never quite be ‘whole’, because it too possesses a dual identity: it is a song about wolves and outlaws simultaneously. Constantly shifting and never belonging to one category for long enough to be fixed down, this giedd ‘song’ that is not quite gesomnad ‘whole’ thus echoes the paradoxical wolf-like outcast, who tears (tosliteð) the boundary between the human and animal apart, participating in two identities simultaneously yet never fully belonging to one or the other. Unlike the riddles, whose speakers ask the reader to Saga hwæt ic hatte ‘Say what I am called’, Wulf makes no such invitation. The wolf(ish outlaws) of this poem do not demand speech but silence, the dual identity of the poem and its subjects that may not be pinned down preventing us from ‘answering’ this ‘riddle’, stealing the audience’s speech like the legendary lupus in fabula.



193



194



195

As noted above (p. 81 n.29), us ‘probably indicate[s] a “we” of more than two people in the refrain’; Isaacs, Structural Principles, p. 115. This latter is James B. Spamer’s rendering of the line; ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’, Old English Newsletter, 12.2 (1979), 30 (p. 30). Emily Jensen, ‘Narrative Voice in the Old English Wulf’, Chaucer Review, 13 (1979), 373–83 (p. 374).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts This giedd ‘song’ is quite literally not gesomnad ‘whole’. Peppered with ‘isolated half-line[s]’196 (lines 3, 8, 17, and 19) whose a-verses are not ‘united’ with anything, the final lines which describe this ‘never whole song’ constitute a moment of self-recognition in which the poem articulates its own incompleteness. Creating ‘gaps and silences in which meaning grows out of the unsaid rather than the said’,197 the ‘silences’ and the ‘unsaid’ themselves are the meaning of these half-lines, bespeaking the speaker’s status as an outlaw, ‘one without opportunity of dialogue, forbidden “to exchange words” and rendered speechless, a characteristic associating [her] with the beast which lacks the gift of speech’,198 particularly the wolf which she is so alike. Wulf, the lupus ‘wolf’ in this fabula ‘story’, is twice mentioned directly after these silences (lines 3 and 8),199 and his name appears twice in a halfline which ‘contains only three syllables instead of the usual minimum of four’: Wulf, min Wulf ‘Wulf, my Wulf’ (line 13).200 Perhaps by invoking him, addressing him, and recalling his presence, the speaker gives this lupus ‘wolf’, her ‘watcher’ (‘a person loses his voice if a wolf sees him first’),201 the power to steal her speech.202 Wulf thus ‘bears’ her voice (like the hwelp ‘pup’)203 to the wood, ‘slitting’ their giedd ‘song’ asunder like a wolf tearing flesh from bone, leaving behind a broken and disjoined half-song. A song which is both composed by and addressed to a wolf (the animal with legendary speech-stealing powers), a song which Klinck, ed., Elegies, p. 170. Belanoff, ‘Women’s Songs’, p. 198. While it is not necessary to assume that the poem would have been performed with these silences incorporated, that the a-verses were missing their b-verse would have been evident from the fact that the words within do not alliterate with the lines that follow; the alliteration on ‘u’ in the lines Ungelic(e) is us ‘We are different’ (lines 3 and 8), and on ‘w’ in the half-line […] bireð wulf to wuda ‘[…] borne to the woods by a wolf’ (line 17) is not repeated in the succeeding lines in either case. 198 Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 4. 199 Likewise, the wulf of ambiguous identity is mentioned directly before one of these ‘silences’ (line 17). 200 Anne L. Klinck, ‘The Old English Elegy as a Genre’, English Studies in Canada, 10 (1984), 129–40 (p. 137). 201 Isidore, Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. 202 A poem, of course, requires words and voice to exist, and cannot be written with silence. However, the speaker’s ‘speech’ – this poem itself – can be partially stolen by the removal of some of its verse, rendering this ‘song’ not fully gesomnad ‘whole’. 203 Indeed, the hwelp ‘pup’ can be taken as a metaphor for the speaker’s voice, similar to the way in which Greenfield interprets it ‘as a metaphor for Wulf’s and the speaker’s joy in love, which is metaphorically also “our giedd [‘song’] together”’; ‘All Passion Pent’, p. 10.

196 197

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A Wolfish Way of Reading Wulf and Eadwacer is simultaneously a melody composed by an outlaw and for an outlaw (the very ‘antithesis’ of the scop, ‘a kind of anti-poet, […] an unbinder, an undoer, and an uncreator’)204 can never be quite whole, but inevitably must be filled with silences.



204

Williams, ‘Exile’, pp. 5 and 8–9 respectively. Equally, perhaps it is the wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’, the true ‘wolves’ of the poem, who have stolen the speaker’s voice. She is denied participation in their group song and prevented from ‘exchang[ing] words’ with them (ibid., p. 4) as both a human and as a lone wolf who cannot join in with the pack’s group chorus; nor do they allow her to sing a duet with Wulf. Perhaps it is only because of the strength of her love for Wulf, for whom she yearns so deeply, that the speaker partially regains her voice and forces out these few lines.

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4 Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story

‘A

s a boot was shaped to accept a foot, a dog was shaped to accept a collar’, but though ‘a man might befriend a wolf, even break a wolf, […] no man could truly tame a wolf’; so George R. R. Martin writes in his A Dance with Dragons.1 While this may be true in Westeros, it was not the case in East Anglia where, in the ninth century, a remarkable miracle occurred. Edmund, the king of East Anglia, had been brutally tortured and decapitated by a rapacious, wolfish Dane named Hinguar,2 who unceremoniously dumped the king’s head in a patch of woodland. Once Hinguar’s army had disembarked and Edmund’s people emerged from hiding, they went searching for their lord’s head. As they trudged through the brambles, they heard something: ‘Here! Here! Here!’. The king’s head had come back to life. Following its voice, Edmund’s people soon found the holy object clasped between the paws of a wolf. Tamed in the presence of Edmund by God, in a reversal of its traditional roles as rapacious corpse-scavenger and speech-stealer, this creature protected the king’s head from the depredations of other animals even as it slavered over the free meal sitting under its nose. This is the story of Edmund’s martyrdom according to the Passio Sancti Eadmundi, first recorded in writing by Abbo of Fleury at the request of the monks of Ramsey Abbey,3 where he taught Latin between 985 and 987.4 Just feawum gearum ‘a few years’ after Abbo put the Passio to parchment, seo boc ‘that book’ fell into the hands of Ælfric of Eynsham, who subsequently 1



2



3



4

George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons (London: HarperVoyager, 2011), p. 9. Throughout this chapter, Scandinavian names are Anglicised; Hinguar’s name in Norse is Ívarr. See Winterbottom, p. 67, and Hervey, p. 8. Roger Wright, ‘Abbo of Fleury in Ramsey (985–987)’, in Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800–c.1250, ed. by Elizabeth M. Tyler, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 105–20 (pp. 105–6). These dates come from Ælfric’s Passio, wherein it is stated that Abbo arrived at Ramsey three years before Dunstan died, and that he returned to Fleury two years later (p. 43). Since ‘Abbo dedicates his text to Archbishop Dunstan’, this ‘suggest[s] that it was composed before Dunstan’s death in 988’; Pinner, p. 34.

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts added an abridged, vernacular version of Abbo’s text to his collection of saints’ lives.5 This text ‘is well known to and has delighted generations of undergraduates through Ælfric’s version’,6 the intriguing animal and its supernatural charge providing motivation for even the most reluctant student of the Old English language. Yet Edmund’s wolf and talking head have failed to become as influential a part of the canon of Old English literary research as they are of the canon of pedagogy. Instead, since ‘virtually nothing is known of the historical “king” Edmund’,7 research into both Abbo’s and Ælfric’s passiones is generally dominated by assessments of their historicity, with some treating them as ‘basically historical and reliable’.8 For obvious reasons, those clearly fictional elements of Edmund’s passion – the wolf, the talking head, and other posthumous miracles – have largely been ignored in such research; in her well-known article ‘Fact and Fiction in the Legend of St. Edmund’, for example, historian Dorothy Whitelock simply states that ‘it is not [her] concern to deal with the miracles claimed for Edmund’.9 As a result, ‘Edmund’s passion is thus shorn of its fantastic elements although they are integral to the story’.10

5



6



7



8



9



10

Needham, p. 43. Ælfric composed his Lives of Saints in the final decade of the tenth century between c. 993 and 998, following the completion of the Catholic Homilies, which were written between 989 and 991; see Aaron J Kleist, The Chronology and Canon of Ælfric of Eynsham, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 37 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2019), pp. 135 and 71 respectively. However, Ælfric’s comment that ða þa seo boc com to us binnan feawum gearum, þa awende we hit on Englisc (Needham, p. 43) ‘within a few years, when that book [Abbo’s Passio] had come to us, we then translated it into English’ suggests that he composed his Passio Eadmundi soon after Abbo completed his version in the mid to late 980s, perhaps at the very beginning of the period during which he composed the Lives, or even ‘during [the] period of intense composition’ when he was writing the Catholic Homilies; Mark Faulkner, ‘“Like a Virgin”: The Reheading of St. Edmund and Monastic Reform in Late-Tenth-Century England’, in Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination, ed. by Larissa Tracy and Jeff Massey, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts, 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 39–52 (p. 50). Catherine Cubitt, ‘Folklore and Historiography: Oral Stories and the Writing of Anglo-Saxon History’, in Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Elizabeth M. Tyler and Ross Balzaretti, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 16 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 189–223 (p. 197). Pinner, p. 3. ‘Written evidence for [Edmund’s] reign is non-existent and, despite a glut of later hagiography, the true circumstances of his death remain vague’; Andrew Gourlay, ‘Things Left Behind: Matter, Narrative and the Cult of St Edmund of East Anglia’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 2017), p. 123. Paul Cavill, ‘Fun and Games: Viking Atrocity in the Passio sancti Eadmundi’, Notes and Queries, 52 (2005), 284–6 (p. 284). Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 31 (1969), 217–33 (p. 220). Cubitt, ‘Folklore’, p. 197.

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story Some have attempted to correct this bias by locating literary sources for the various narrative elements of which these texts are comprised,11 or by ascribing their existence to oral tradition.12 In general, however, because of the focus on source-work and historiography, and perhaps because ‘familiarity’ with this tale and its remarkable wolf and disembodied-yet-still-speaking head amongst medievalists ‘has blunted the impact of the outlandish aspects of the story’,13 Abbo and Ælfric’s narratives have rarely been appreciated as nuanced works of literature in their own right. Yet, combining source work and the analysis of cultural context with close readings of the passiones allows for an interpretation of these texts which appreciates their value as both literary works of spiritual allegory, and as accumulations of inherited and analogous material and traditions. Significantly, it is the previously overlooked wolves in these stories which allow for this new interpretation.

Where Are the Wolves From? Sources of the passiones It is easy to understand the temptation to mine Abbo’s Passio for grains of historical truth. The author claims to have had at his disposal a first-hand eyewitness account of Edmund’s martyrdom, from an armiger ‘armourbearer’ for the king himself. At the end of his life, this man related the events of Edmund’s death to King Æthelstan in the presence of Bishop Dunstan (c. 909–88) whom, Abbo claims, was his immediate source.14 This assertion has been accepted as true by some,15 and as at least plausible – to differing degrees – by others.16 As Paul Cavill has pointed out, however,

11

14 15 12 13



16

See, for example, Cavill’s ‘Fun and Games’ and ‘The Armour-Bearer in Abbo’s Passio sancti Eadmundi and Anglo-Saxon England’, Leeds Studies in English NS, 36 (2005), 47–61. See Cubitt, ‘Folklore’. Ibid., p. 197. See Winterbottom p. 67, and Hervey, p. 9. Whitelock, for example, argues that ‘it is possible for two memories to cover some 116 years’; ‘Fact and Fiction’, p. 219. See Marco Mostert, The Political Theology of Abbo of Fleury: A Study of the Ideas about Society and Law of the Tenth-century Monastic Reform Movement (Hilversum: Verloren Publishers, 1987), p. 41; Susan J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, Fourth Series, 9 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 63–4; James W. Earl, ‘Violence and Non-violence in Anglo-Saxon England: Ælfric’s “Passion of St. Edmund”’, Philological Quarterly, 78 (1999), 125–49 (p. 129); and Antonia Gransden, ‘Abbo of Fleury’s “Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, Revue Bénédictine, 105 (1995), 20–78 (p. 57). Despite believing that the armour-bearer could have been a real person,

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts the ‘role of armiger [armour-bearer] is unattested as such in Anglo-Saxon England’,17 and the miraculous wolf and talking head clearly cannot have been observed by this person even if he was a real figure. Moreover, ‘“the authority of the reliable eyewitness” is itself a hagiographic commonplace’,18 and the Passio does indeed display numerous similarities to a plethora of other saints’ lives, so much so that it has been described as ‘a minefield of hagiographical topoi’.19 Likewise, while it is possible that Dunstan was truly Abbo’s source,20 the bishop’s reliability is itself doubtful since he was ‘known to have liked narrating stories about saints’21 and ‘reputed to have had a taste for the heroic verse of his ancestors’, such that the story of Edmund’s martyrdom could have been ‘improvised in the native poetic style and meter’ by him.22 It is entirely possible, then, that the Passio ‘is a patchwork of borrowings from well-known hagiographies, which Abbo [and/or Dunstan] adapted as [they] thought fit’.23



17 18



19



20



21



22



23

however, Gransden concedes that ‘whatever the arms bearer told Dunstan, it was surely not the ultimate source of the story told in the Passio’, since ‘the details of Abbo’s narrative follow hagiographic models so closely […] that most of them must be fiction’; ibid., p. 59. ‘Fun and Games’, p. 285, and see also Cavill, ‘Armour-bearer’. Ian McDougall, ‘Serious Entertainments: An Examination of a Peculiar Type of Viking Atrocity’, ASE, 22 (1993), 201–25 (p. 204), translating from Hippolyte Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires, Subsidia Hagiographica, 13B, 2nd edn (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1966), pp. 182–3. This often involved the witness being of ‘great age’, which ‘was considered to add to an informant’s trustworthiness’ (Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 57), and indeed, Abbo describes both the armour-bearer and Dunstan as such: the former is sene decrepito (p. 67) ‘a broken-down veteran’ (p. 9), while cui nix capitis credi compellit (p. 68) ‘the snows of [Dunstan’s] head compel belief’ (p. 9). Ridyard, pp. 212–13. Abbo himself admits that he had more than one source, noting that the final miracle he relates was not told to him by Dunstan; see Winterbottom, p. 68, and Hervey, p. 11. Since Abbo apparently intended Dunstan to read this text, as suggested by the fact that he addresses the bishop in the epistle, Whitelock contends that the author ‘could not drastically have altered what he claimed to have heard from [him]’; ‘Fact and Fiction’, p. 221. Antonia Gransden, ‘The Alleged Incorruption of the Body of St Edmund, King and Martyr’, Antiquaries Journal, 74 (1994), 135–68 (p. 138). E. G. Whatley, ‘Late Old English Hagiography, ca. 950–1150’, in Hagiographies: International History of the Latin and Vernacular Hagiographical Literature in the West from its Origins to 1550, ed. by Guy Philippart, Corpus Christianorum Texts and Studies, 1–8, 8 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994-2020), ii (1996), pp. 429–99 (p. 446). Antonia Gransden, ‘The Legends and Traditions Concerning the Origins of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds’, English Historical Review, 100 (1985), 1–24 (p. 7). Abbo himself compares Edmund to St Lawrence (Paul Cavill, ‘Analogy and Genre in the Legend of St Edmund’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 47

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story As such, several possible analogues for the wolf and talking head have been identified, with Abbo himself alluding to a biblical source for each. He describes the speaking head as manifestans in se verbigenae magnalia, qui rudenti asellae humana conpegit verba (p. 81) ‘displaying the miraculous power of Him who was born of the Word, and endowed the braying ass with human speech’ (p. 41), a reference to Numbers 22.28,24 in which God grants a donkey the power of speech: ‘And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said: What have I done to thee? Why strikest thou me, lo, now this third time?’. Another biblical legend, the story of ‘Daniel’s miraculous escape from the lions’ den’ in Daniel 6.16–23,25 is also alluded to when the tame wolf is discovered and the king’s followers beatissimum regum et martyrem Eadmundum illi viro desideriorum iudicaverunt meritis similem qui inter esurientium rictus leonum illesus sprevit minas insidiantium (p. 81) ‘recognised in the most blessed Edmund a worthy parallel to that enviable man who, unharmed among the gaping jaws of hungry lions, laughed to scorn the threats of those who had plotted his destruction’ (p. 43). Other, hagiographical sources are not directly referred to by Abbo, but could also have served as sources for his narrative. At the beginning of the Passio, for example, in a ‘passage comparing East Anglia to the desert’, Abbo appears to ‘situate[] the setting of the story in the tradition of the lives of the desert fathers such as […] Mary of Egypt’,26 whose vita, as written by

26 24 25

(2003), 21–45 (p. 31); see Winterbottom, p. 85, and Hervey, p. 53) and to St Sebastian (Winterbottom, pp. 78–79, and Hervey, p. 35), the latter of whom was also peppered with arrows; Cavill, ‘Analogy and Genre’, pp. 31–3. Carl Phelpstead also suggests that ‘the hiding and finding of Edmund’s head picks up again the parallels between Edmund and Sebastian, as Sebastian’s body was miraculously salvaged from a sewer in which it had been hidden’; ‘King, Martyr and Virgin: Imitatio Christi in Ælfric’s Life of St Edmund’, in St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint, ed. by Anthony Bale (York: York Medieval Press, 2009), pp. 27–44 (p. 42). Edmund and Sebastian’s fates are also similar to that of St Ælfheah of Canterbury, who in 1012 was killed ‘by a Viking troop who pelted him with bones before finally putting him to death’; McDougall, p. 204. Edmund’s beheading, meanwhile, has been compared to an episode of i Samuel 31 wherein Saul orders his armour-bearer to kill him, after which his body is decapitated by the Philistines, an analogue which would explain the presence of the armour-bearer in the Passio; Cavill, ‘Fun and Games’, pp. 285–6. Gransden has also proposed parallels with St Stephen, who was stoned to death (‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, pp. 35–6), and St Basil of Amasia, whose decapitated head ‘grew back on the body when the two were fitted together again’; ‘Incorruption’, p. 138. Faulkner, pp. 44–5. Pinner, p. 48. Robert George Stanton, ‘Translation and Anglo-Saxon Hagiography: Abbo of Fleury’s Passion of St. Edmund and Ælfric’s Old English Translation’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Toronto, 1994), pp. 111–12. Stanton

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Sophronius, provides a ‘rather similar tale’ to the Passio.27 In this text a lion guards the body of St Mary in the desert, and when the saint is sought by a monk named Zosimus, the animal aids the man by digging a grave for Mary, before ‘return[ing] “as quietly as a lamb to its desert solitude”’.28 Mary’s lion acts much like Edmund’s wolf, who ‘returned quietly, without harming anyone, to its “chosen solitude”’ after fulfilling its guard duties.29 Two hagiographies detailing the life of St Denis – Hilduin of St Denis’s Vita S. Dionisii, and the Passio SS. Dionysii, Rustici, et Elutherii attributed to Fortunatus30 – also contain analogues to both Edmund’s speaking head and the wolf which protects it. In Hilduin’s Vita S. Dionisii, ‘lions lie down with [Denis] and prompt allusion to the biblical story of Daniel’,31 as does Abbo’s wolf with Edmund. Denis is also ‘tortured on a rack and pierced with iron hooks’ in this text, ‘as Abbo says Edmund looked as if he had been’ and,32 once beheaded, Denis ‘walks for over two miles carrying his head until he reaches the place where he wishes to be buried’,33 an echo of the reanimation of Edmund’s head. In the Passio SS. Dionysii, meanwhile, after the saint is decapitated, his ‘severed head cries out to the Lord’.34 Fleury held relics of St Denis,35 suggesting that Abbo would have been familiar with stories of this saint’s martyrdom and his miraculous, still-speaking disembodied head. Likewise, ‘it is not unlikely that Abbo of Fleury would have turned for a model’ for the Passio of King Edmund to the legend of St Denis, since he was ‘the patron saint […] of the kings of France’.36



27 28



29



30

33 34 35 36 31 32

is here referring to the description of East Anglia as a place quibus inclusi non indigeant solitudine heremi (p. 70) ‘in the seclusion of which solitude cannot fail the hermits’ (p. 15), or, as Stanton translates, ‘where the members do not lack the solitude of the desert’; ‘Translation’, p. 101. Gransden, ‘Legends’, p. 7. Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 38, translating from Sophronius, Vita Sanctæ Mariæ Ægypticæ, in Vitæ Patrum: sive historiae eremiticae libri decem, ed. by J. P. Migne, PL, 73–4, 2 vols (Paris: Migne, 1849–50), i (1849), cols 671–90 (col. 690): et leo quidem in interiora solitudinis quasi ovis mansueta abscessit. Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 38, translating from Winterbottom, p. 81 (nota dilectae solitudinis secreta illaesus repetiit). For this passage in Hervey, see Corolla, p. 43. The former ‘was known in England by the late tenth century; it is in the “Cotton-Corpus” Legendary, of which Ælfric’s Lives of Saints is in effect a translation’; Gransden, ‘Legends’, p. 6. Cavill, ‘Analogy and Genre’, pp. 41–2. Ibid., p. 42. Gransden, ‘Legends’, p. 6. Faulkner, p. 44. Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 35. Gransden, ‘Legends’, p. 6. A number of other French hagiographies have also been proposed as sources, including the lives of Justus of Beauvais, Leo of

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story Yet none of these sources provide an ‘exact hagiographic parallel’ to the Passio’s speaking head and the wolf which protects it.37 The head-guarding animal, in particular, is uniquely lupine, with all of Abbo’s potential sources featuring lions. It is of course possible that, ‘since Abbo no doubt knew that there were no lions in England, he might well have considered a wolf, a savage beast well-known in western Europe, a more suitable guardian for St Edmund’s body’.38 However, while it may be true that Abbo’s decision to substitute canid for felid was in part made for the sake of verisimilitude regarding native species, the wolf does not function as a mere Anglicised stand-in for the lion. Rather, this animal possesses unique characteristics which suggest that Abbo may have utilised this animal specifically because of lupine cultural traditions circulating in early medieval England. One such ‘traditional association’ which may have been known to Abbo was ‘a belief in the totemic function of the wolf as a guardian-spirit for the kings of East Anglia’.39 Edmund was ‘probably the last of the pre-Danish kings of East Anglia, the last of the royal dynasty of the Wuffings who had ruled Norfolk and Suffolk for at least three hundred years’, and whose name means ‘the kin of the wolf’.40 The importance of the wolf to the Wuffing dynasty is ‘reflected artistically’ in the Sutton Hoo burial in East Anglia, which is generally ‘believed to be the burial-place of the Wuffings during the late sixth to early seventh centuries’.41 A purse lid found at Sutton Hoo, for example, features the ‘man between beasts’ motif, where ‘the peculiar flanking posture of the beasts could be regarded as a representation of the protective presence of the putative ancestral guardian-spirit of the Wuffings’.42 As Rebecca Pinner suggests, ‘the possible

39 40 41 37 38



42

Rouen and Solange of Bourges, all ‘cephalophoric saints’ whose decapitated heads speak; Faulkner, p. 44. Newton, p. 109. Gransden, ‘Legends’, p. 7. Newton, p. 109. Pinner, p. 222. Ibid. This might also explain ‘why the emblem of the she-wolf and twins from the Roman foundation-legend of Romulus and Remus appears to have been popular in East Anglia’: perhaps ‘the essentially totemic Roman foundation-legend of the she-wolf and twins appeared congruent with East Anglia’s own, arguably totemic, ancestral associations with the wolf’; Newton, pp. 108–9, and see also Carol Neuman de Vegvar, ‘The Travelling Twins: Romulus and Remus in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Northumbria’s Golden Age, ed. by Jane Hawkes and Susan Mills (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), pp. 256–67 (pp. 257–9). Newton, p. 108. As Carola Hicks notes, although these purse-lid animals ‘are not definable as a particular species, the pointed, biting jaws, prominent ears, long tail and predatory aspect suggest wolves’, an interpretation supported by the existence of similar images featuring wolves found on two other early medieval artefacts: ‘wolf-headed warriors confront a central spear-dancing

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts underlying meaning of this image’ of symbolic protection emblematised by a lupine creature on either side of the warrior is ‘remarkably similar to the manner in which the wolf is described as guarding the head of St Edmund’ by holding it between its paws.43 The usage of lupine art by the Wuffing dynasty until at least Edmund’s time is also demonstrated by the fact that wolf heads are depicted ‘on a seal found at Eye (Suffolk)’ which ‘is believed to have belonged to Æthelwold, bishop of Dummoc’, who may be ‘the bishop referred to in some accounts as advising Edmund during his negotiations with the Danes’.44 This seal likely ‘dates from during, or before, Edmund’s reign’ and therefore ‘represents continuity in the popular use of the emblematic wolf in East Anglia’, perhaps suggesting that the wolf’s appearance in the story of Edmund’s martyrdom ‘is in part a back formation […] to explain an earlier visual tradition’.45 Perhaps Edmund’s head-guarding wolf is not found in any of the hagiographic material that may have been used by Abbo, therefore, because it originated in East Anglian folklore and legend.46 ‘Folklore and folkloric motifs’, in fact, have been described as ‘the main animating force in saints’ cults’, with ‘popular culture impos[ing] a veneer of Christianity on old, non-Christian stories’47 as tales of saints ‘circulated among the people in informal, popular legend’.48 Indeed, ‘the dynamic of oral storytelling was of the upmost importance in maintaining a cult’s currency within broader society’, since ‘a saint could only remain active as a cult figure if people continued to see him/her as important and continued to talk about him/her’.49 It seems that the case was no different with Edmund’s cult despite Abbo’s assertion that the story of his martyrdom eam pluribus man, naked except for a belt and a bird-headed horned helmet on the Gutenstein scabbard’, and ‘an identical character is accompanied by a wolf-headed figure on one of the Torslunda dies’; Animals in Early Medieval Art (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993), p. 68. 43 Cult of St Edmund, p. 223. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., p. 224. 46 While it may appear contradictory that the wolf serves a totemic function for Edmund and yet is also a symbol of his enemies, as Pluskowski notes, ‘the wolf, equated at times with violence could simultaneously be an inspiring emblem and an embodiment of evil without presenting, what from the modern perspective, seems like an implausible contradiction’. For example, ‘Christians associated themselves with predatory animals, but distanced themselves from animal behaviour’; Wolves, pp. 152 and 171 respectively. 47 Anthony Bale, ‘Introduction: St Edmund’s Medieval Lives’, in St Edmund, King and Martyr, ed. by Bale, pp. 1–25 (p. 20). 48 Rosemary Woolf, ‘Saints’ Lives’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. by Eric Gerald Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 37–66 (pp. 37–8). 49 Gourlay, pp. 179–80.

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story ignotam (p. 67) ‘is unknown to most people’ (p. 7) except clergymen, not least since Abbo composed the first written account of the martyrdom over a century after Edmund’s death (ad 869).50 With the attribution of the tale to the armour-bearer likely an invention,51 it seems likely that ‘lay veneration for Edmund’ in fact ‘preceded official ecclesiastical recognition’,52 with tales of the saint circulating locally in East Anglia, keeping his cult alive until the legend of the martyrdom was encountered and adapted in writing by Abbo. In spite of his claims otherwise, in fact, Abbo himself betrays this possibility when he ‘attributes all the early stages in the cult to the initiatives of the local people […] who retrieved the corpse and its severed head and built the first humble church in which Edmund’s remains were placed’.53 When he describes the miracle of the speaking head, moreover, Abbo ‘giv[es] us the words actually spoken by the head in English’,54 which could reflect ‘local tradition’.55 Most telling, however, is a statement from Ælfric’s Passio, in which it is ‘made […] clear that by the late tenth century a vigorous oral culture had grown up around St Edmund’:56 Fela wundra we gehyrdon on folclicre spræce be þam halgan Eadmunde, þe we her nellað on gewrite settan; ac hi wat gehwa (p. 57) ‘We have heard of many wonders in common talk about the holy Edmund that we will not put in writing, because everyone knows them’.57

52 50 51

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See Winterbottom, p. 67, and Hervey, p. 7. See pp. 123–4 above. Catherine Cubitt, ‘Sites and Sanctity: Revisiting the Cult of Murdered and Martyred Anglo-Saxon Royal Saints’, Early Medieval Europe, 9 (2000), 53–83 (p. 64). Coins ‘were struck in the name of St Edmund’ by 890–910 (Mostert, Political Theology, p. 41), suggesting that ‘Edmund’s cult must have already been well established before 895’; Gourlay, p. 124. For more on these coins, see C. E. Blunt, ‘The St. Edmund Memorial Coinage’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 31 (1969), 234–55. Cubitt, ‘Sites and Sanctity’, p. 64. See Winterbottom, p. 81, and Hervey, p. 41. Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe, trans. by Éva Pálmai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 91. Emma Cownie, ‘The Cult of St Edmund in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Language and Communication of a Medieval Saint’s Cult’, NM, 99 (1998), 177–97 (p. 188). This contradicts a remark in the Old English Preface of the Lives: Ne secge we nan þincg niwes on þissere gesetnysse, forþan ðe hit stod gefyrn awriten on ledenbocum þeah þe þa læwedan men þæt nyston (Ælfric’s ‘Lives of Saints’, ed. and trans. by Skeat, i, 4) ‘We say nothing new in this composition, because it has stood, written long ago, in books of Latin, although laymen did not know it’. Perhaps the Passio Eadmundi was an exception to this, especially if it was written separately from the rest of the Lives; see p. 122 n.5 above.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Hence, although the fact that the tale was filtered through his hand means that Abbo undoubtedly put his own touches on the narrative, it seems likely that the core details about the miraculous events that followed Edmund’s death ‘derive from a lively oral tradition’ which preceded the monk.58 This would explain why the events detailed within the passiones differ from the account of Edmund’s death given in the A-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in which it is stated that Eadmund cyning him wiþ feaht, ⁊ þa Deniscan sige namon ⁊ þone cyning ofslogon ⁊ þæt lond all geeodon59 ‘King Edmund fought with them, and the Danes took the victory, and then slayed the king and overran all of that land’; an account which may be considered ‘relatively accurate’ since, being ‘dated to the opening years of the 890s’, it was ‘produced within three decades’ of Edmund’s death’.60 This suggests that the majority of the events depicted in the passiones were invented as the story of the king’s death was told and retold in the century that followed.

Wolves and Lambs in East Anglia Despite the plethora of sources potentially drawn upon by Abbo (and/ or Dunstan), none fully explain the episode of the speaking head, and especially the strange creature which guards it. Though it could be that ‘an exact parallel for the wolf story has proved elusive’61 because there is simply no literary analogue or source to be found,62 those who have drawn a connection between the protective function of this animal and Edmund’s Wuffing lineage and East Anglian lupine folklore have acknowledged that

58



59

62 60 61

Cubitt, ‘Folklore’, p. 197. If Abbo did hear the story from Dunstan, therefore, the tale that the archbishop related may have been the product of a cumulative oral tradition that he and/or Abbo embellished (both ‘were familiar with many Lives of saints and likely to bring their accounts into line with what was expected of a work in this genre’; Whitelock, p. 219) rather than, as Dunstan claims, the account of an eyewitness. Indeed, as seen above, ‘“the authority of the reliable eyewitness” is itself a hagiographic commonplace’ (McDougall, p. 204), and although the armour-bearer could also be a folkloric ‘storyteller’s convention’ (Cubitt, ‘Folklore’, p. 197), it is not unlikely that Dunstan would have added this detail himself since he was interested in the stories of saints, especially since this figure may be an allusion to i Samuel 31; see pp. 124–5 n.23 above The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 3: MS A, ed. by Janet M. Bately (Cambridge: Brewer, 1986), p. 47. Gourlay, p. 124. Gransden, ‘Legends’, p. 7. Or, as could be the case, Abbo and/or Dunstan borrowed elements from a combination of literary sources when composing the Passio; see the section ‘Where Are the Wolves From? Sources of the passiones’ above.

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story the cultural meanings attached to wolves in early medieval England could have contributed to the portrayal of the animal in the passiones. In fact, as the following pages will demonstrate, wolves – and the cultural meanings with which they were associated – are integral to these narratives. Given the hagiographic form, it is no surprise that the prevailing wolf metaphor of the passiones is that of the animal as representative of the devil (the Danes) in opposition to the lamb or sheep as a symbol of Christ and the faithful Christian (Edmund). Edmund is also depicted as a herdsman of his people, as modelled on Christ as a shepherd who shields his flock of followers from the attacks of the lupine devil. At the opening of Abbo’s Passio East Anglia is thus depicted as a place of ‘Edenic idyll’, a ‘richly fertile region’63 with ortorum nemorumque amoenitatae gratissima (p. 70) ‘delightfully pleasant gardens and woods’ (p. 15) and pascuis pecorum et iumentorum non mediocriter fertilis (p. 70) ‘abundant grazing for flocks and herds’ (p. 70). The ‘abundant grazing for flocks’ is not only literal, however; this image also metaphorises the paradisical nature of East Anglia for its human inhabitants, for whom it is ‘a holy kingdom which offers solace to those seeking the spiritual life’,64 a place watched over by a king who acts as ‘God’s servant and the spiritual guardian of his people’:65 huic provinciae tam feraci […] praefuit sanctissimus deoque acceptus Eadmundus […] nec antiqui hostis deciperetur simulatione fraudulenta, nec malignorum hominum reciperet contra iustitiam sententias […] egentibus dapsilis liberaliter, pupillis et viduis clementissimus pater. (pp. 70–1) [over this fertile province reigned the most holy, and, in God’s sight, acceptable Prince Eadmund. […] he was neither deceived by the fraudulent pretences of the old enemy of mankind, nor sanctioned the iniquitous sophisms of evilly-minded men […] he was liberal in his bounty to those in want, and like a benignant father to the orphan and the widow] (pp. 15–17)

Similarly, although he omits the lengthy description of East Anglia found in his source, Ælfric likewise depicts Edmund as a guardian of his people, a Christ-like shepherd whose kingdom is a spiritual paradise for bilewitan cristenan (p. 46) ‘innocent Christians’: He wæs cystig wædlum and wydewum swa swa fæder and mid welwillendnysse gewissode his folc symle to rihtwisnysse, and þam reþum styrde and gesæliglice leofode on soþan geleafan (p. 44) ‘He was 65 63 64

Pinner, p. 42. Ibid., p. 43. Michael Benskin, ‘The Literary Structure of Ælfric’s Life of King Edmund’, in Loyal Letters, ed. by Houwen and MacDonald, pp. 1–27 (p. 16).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts generous to the poor and like a father to widows, and with kindness he directed his people ever to righteousness and corrected the savage, and he lived happily in the true faith’. In both accounts Edmund is ‘an analogue of Christ’,66 a shepherd of his people who guides them spiritually and shields them from evil. At the same time Edmund is a faithful sheep in Christ’s own flock; according to Ælfric, he wurðode symble mid æþelum þeawum þone ælmihtigan God (p. 44) ‘always worshipped the almighty God with devout practices’. Similarly, in an allusion to Matthew 10.16 in which Christ tells his disciples that ‘I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves’, Abbo describes Edmund as possessing columbinae simplicitatis mansuetudine temperavit serpentinae calliditatis astutiam (p. 71) ‘the gentleness and simplicity of the dove with the wariness and sagacity of the serpent’ (p. 17). Given the similarities between Edmund’s kingdom and Eden, it is no wonder that Satan sets his maleficent sights on this paradise and its Christ-like leader, sending one of his membrorum (p. 71) ‘satellites’ (p. 19) to test the king’s faith. This membrum is a Dane named Hinguar, a filius diaboli (p. 76) ‘son of the devil’ (p. 31)67 who ab illo terrae vertice quo sedem suam posuit qui per elationem Altissimo similis esse concupivit (p. 71) ‘came […] from that roof of the world where he [Satan] had fixed his abode who in his mad ambition sought to make himself equal to the Most High’ (p. 19), a place home to bloodthirsty people adeo crudeles esse naturali ferocitate ut nesciant malis hominum mitescere, quando-quidem quidam ex eis populi vescuntur humanis carnibus (p. 72) ‘so cruel by the ferocity of their nature, as to be incapable of feeling for the ills of mankind; as is shown by the fact that some of their tribes use human flesh for food’ (p. 19). Predatorial, animalistic people who prey upon others like animals, these northmen mirror Satan and his agents, the wolves of the New Testament who predate upon God’s flock. Ælfric’s Danes are also geanlæhte þurh deofol (p. 45) ‘joined by the devil’, and are described as wælhreow ‘cruel’, arleas ‘dishonourable’, and reðe ‘savage’, ‘words which are frequently used to describe the devil or persecutors of the Christians’,68 and all of which are used by Ælfric in his description of the arleasan sceaðan ‘dishonourable criminals’ whose

66 67



68

Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 29. Similarly, Hinguar’s people are ministri diaboli (p. 79) ‘instruments of the devil’ (p. 37). N. F. Blake, ‘The Battle of Maldon’, Neophilologus, 49 (1965), 332–45 (p. 335). For example, Hinguar is described as þone wælhreowan Hingwar (p. 49) ‘the savage Hinguar’ and þa wælhreowan hæþenan (p. 53) ‘the savage heathen’, while the same word is used of the Jews who arrest Christ (p. 49). Hinguar is also described as þa[m] arleasan ‘the dishonourable one’ on two occasions (p. 49), as well as se arlease flotman (p. 50) ‘the dishonourable seaman’; þam reþan Hingware (p. 47) ‘the savage Hinguar’; and as a reþan hlaforde (p. 49) ‘savage lord’.

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story wælhreownysse ‘cruelty’ renders them swa swa reðe wulfas ‘like savage wolves’ in his Passio Albani.69 Through the guidance of Satan, Abbo’s Hinguar conatus est in exterminium adducere totius fines Brittaniae (p. 71) ‘attempted […] to reduce to destruction the whole confines of Britain’ (p. 19), corrupting the paradisal East Anglia and preying upon its people like a wolf attacking an unwitting flock of sheep: a boreali parte orientali subito astans cum magna classe ad eius quandam ciuitatem latenter appulit. Quam ignaris civibus introgressus ignibus cremandam dedit, pueros senes cum iunioribus in plateis civitatis obuiam factos iugulat, et matronalem seu virginalem pudicitiam ludibrio tradendam mandat. (pp. 72–3) [approaching (East Anglia) suddenly with a great fleet, [Hinguar] landed by stealth at a city in that region, entered it before the citizens were aware of his approach, and set it on fire. Boys, and men old and young, whom he encountered in the streets of the city were killed; and he paid no respect to the chastity of wife or maid] (p. 21)

Abbo later compares these stealthy martial tactics to the behaviour of wolves: Classem quoque absque valida manu non audebat deserere, quoniam, velut lupis vespertinis mos est clanculo ad plana descendere, repetitis quantotius notis silvarum latibulis, sic consuevit eadem Danorum et Alanorum natio, cum semper studeat rapto vivere, numquam tamen indicta pugna palam contendit cum hoste. (p.73) [Inguar did not venture to leave his fleet without a strong guard; for, just as the wolf is accustomed to steal in the evening down to the plains, and to return with haste by night to his lair in the woods, so it was the practice of the Danish and Alanic people, always intent upon a career of theft, never to risk an open and fair fight with their enemies] (p. 23)

While this comparison attests to the Danes’ slyness,70 their moral depravity, and perhaps also to their outlawry,71 the phrase velut lupis vespertinis 71 69 70

Passio Albani, in Ælfric’s ‘Lives of Saints’, ed. and trans. by Skeat, p. 424. Stanton, ‘Translation’, p. 122. Hinguar is both ‘an outlaw on English soil’ as an invader (Harlan-Haughey, p. 39), as well as an outlaw from God by nature of his association with the devil and his depredations upon the Christian East-Anglians. His ‘lair’, meanwhile, is the woods, home of both wolf and outlaw (see pp. 29–31 above); the ortorum nemorumque amoenitatae gratissima (p. 70) ‘delightfully pleasant gardens and woods’ (p. 15) described before the invasion have been corrupted by the Danish presence.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts mos est clanculo ad plana descendere ‘just as the wolf is accustomed to steal in the evening down to the plains’ also recalls the descriptions of several wolf-like peoples in the Old Testament who, like the Danes, leave carnage and destruction in their wake. In Habakkuk 1.7–9,72 for example, the Chaldeans are described as ‘dreadful, and terrible’ people whose horseman ‘shall all come to the prey’, with leviores pardis equi […] et velociores lupis vespertinis ‘horses […] lighter than leopards, and swifter than evening wolves’, while in Genesis 49.27 Benjamin is described as a lupus rapax ‘ravenous wolf’ who mane comedet praedam et vespere dividet spolia ‘in the morning shall eat the prey, and in the evening shall divide the spoil’. In Zephaniah 3.3, meanwhile, the iudices ‘judges’ of Jerusalem are described as lupi vespere non relinquebant in mane ‘evening wolves, they left nothing for the morning’, while in Jeremiah 5.6, the people of Jerusalem who disobeyed God are themselves the victim of savage ‘evening wolves’: lupus ad vesperam vastavit eos ‘a wolf in the evening hath spoiled them’. Thus, the Danes are ‘portrayed as devils who come like wolves to devour God’s sheep’,73 with Edmund’s people becoming ‘sheep in the midst of wolves’ (Matthew 10.16).74 Ælfric in particular makes this clear when he explicitly associates Hinguar’s devilishness with his wolfishness, describing how se foresæda Hinguar færlice swa swa wulf on lande bestalcode and þa leode ofsloh, wæras and wif and þa unwittigan cild, and to bysmore tucode þa bilewitan cristenan (p. 46) ‘like a wolf the foresaid Hinguar suddenly stalked the land and slayed the people, men and women and the unwitting children, and shamefully harassed the innocent Christians’. Hinguar ambushes and worries his prey like a wolf, allegorising the devil’s attacks on the bilewitan cristenan ‘innocent Christians’ whom he has tormented, to bysmore synd getawode ‘brought to shame’, and whose paradisal home he has corrupted with violence and blood. Although Ælfric does not explicitly state that Hinguar invades Edmund’s kingdom with the intent of tempting the king into renouncing God, therefore, his Danes, like Abbo’s, are devilish wolves in human form who prey on lamb-like Christians, their ‘attacks […] a manifestation of Satan’s depredation’.75

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73 74



75

This parallel has also been noted by Stanton, ‘Translation’, p. 158. While Stanton argues that Abbo ‘deemphasizes the swiftness of the wolf’ in the biblical passage (ibid.), the suddenness of the Danish attack might be taken as ‘swiftness’. Blake, p. 335. See also Luke 10.3 (‘Go: Behold I send you as lambs among wolves’) and Acts 20.29 (‘after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock’). This latter provides a particularly fitting parallel with Abbo’s Passio since when the Danes invade East Anglia, Edmund, the shepherd and guardian of his people, is said to be morabatur eo tempore ab urbe longius (p. 73) ‘at that time staying at some distance from the city’ (p. 23). Allen J. Frantzen, Bloody Good: Chivalry, Sacrifice, and the Great War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 61.

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story Having laid waste to East Anglia, in both passiones the Danes send a messenger to tell the king of the destruction they have wrought, ordering his surrender and endeavouring to tempt him with an offer to share rule of the kingdom – and its riches – with Hinguar.76 This offer parallels Christ’s temptation by the devil, who in Matthew 4.8–9 ‘had promised Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them” if he would worship him [Satan]’.77 Edmund’s bishop falls prey to these temptations, attempting to convince the king to submit to the Danes as they command, or else to act like the hireling who ‘seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and flieth’; so that ‘the wolf catcheth, and scattereth the sheep’ (John 10.12).78 Both are ironic implorations given that the bishop himself ought to serve as a shepherd, loyally protecting his flock even in the face of the ravening wolf.79 Edmund, however, does not surrender to temptation, giving no thought to his possessions or his title80 but only to his remaining people, vowing to die for them, like Christ the Good Shepherd who ‘giveth his life for his sheep’ (John 10.11).81 In so doing, he fulfils his earlier role as the ‘spiritual guardian of his people’,82 proving himself a faithful sheep in the flock of the Good Shepherd, and a true hyrde under crist83 ‘shepherd under Christ’. Though he rejects their offer, the Danes do not relent in their attempts to force Edmund to submit. Acting like the wolf of John 10 who, Ælfric elsewhere notes, is deoful þe syrwð ymbe godes gelaðunge ⁊ cepð hu he mage cristenra manna saula mid leahtrum fordon84 ‘is the devil, who lies in wait around God’s church and watches for how he may destroy the souls of Christian men with sins’, the Danes torture the king in an effort to compel him to lanistis assensum prebere (p. 79) ‘yield to the agents of his [Inguar’s] cruelty’ (p. 35), and to Criste wiðsacan (p. 50) ‘deny Christ’. Like 78 79 76 77



80

83 81 82



84

See Abbo (Winterbottom, p. 74, and Hervey, p. 25), and Ælfric (pp. 46–7). Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 54. See Abbo (Winterbottom, p. 75, and Hervey, p. 27), and Ælfric (p. 48). Ælc biscop ⁊ ælc lareow is to hyrde geset godes folce: þæt hi sceolon þæt folc wið þam wulfe gescyldan (Dominica II. post Pasca, in Ælfric’s ‘Catholic Homilies’: The First Series. Text, ed. by Peter Clemoes, EETS SS, 17 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 313–16 (p. 314)) ‘Each bishop and each teacher is appointed as a shepherd of God’s people, that they shall guard the people against the wolf’. Edmund dismisses both in Abbo’s Passio: regnum promittit, quod habeo; opes conferre cupit, quibus non egeo (p. 76) ‘he promises me a kingdom, that I already possess; he would bestow on me riches, of which I have no need’ (p. 29). In Ælfric’s Passio, he does not mention them at all. See Abbo (Winterbottom, p. 75, and Hervey, p. 27), and Ælfric (p. 48). Benskin, p. 16. Dominica II. post Pasca, in Ælfric’s ‘Catholic Homilies’, ed. by Clemoes, p. 316. See Abbo (Winterbottom, p. 75, and Hervey, p. 27), and Ælfric (p. 48). Dominica II. post Pasca, in Ælfric’s ‘Catholic Homilies’, ed. by Clemoes, p. 314.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts his people, Edmund thus becomes a ‘sheep in the midst of wolves’ (Matthew 10.16): he is ut aries de toto grege electus (p. 79) ‘like a ram chosen out of the whole flock’ (p. 35) and left looking ac si raptum equuleo aut seuis tortum ungulis (p. 79) ‘as if he had been put to the torture of the rack, or had been torn by savage claws’ (p. 35). A faithful sheep in Christ’s flock and a true hyrde under ‘shepherd under’ Him,85 however, Edmund does not abandon his faith but instead calls repeatedly on Christ,86 like the good shepherd who wiðstandan þam reðan wulfe mid lare ⁊ mid gebedum87 ‘resists that savage wolf with preaching and with prayers’. Both lamb and shepherd, ‘a sacrificial victim on behalf of his people’88 who is compared to Christ at the crucifixion,89 Edmund also becomes symbolic of Christ Himself, the ‘sacrificial lamb’.90 Enraged by Edmund’s refusal to abandon Christ, the Danes decapitate the king and hide his head in the woods.91 This, ‘a final attempt to prevent Edmund from eventually enjoying the bodily resurrection universally promised to every Christian’,92 evokes the same fear associated with the corpse-scavenging habit of the wolf, whose consumption of one’s mortal flesh could prevent the soul’s resurrection and salvation by depriving it of a body to re-enter on Judgement Day.93 In turn, by depositing it in the forest as avibus et feris devorandum (p. 80) ‘a prey to birds and beasts’ (p. 41), the Vikings invite additional mutilation of the head by their namesake animal. Yet instead of being consumed by a wolf, Edmund’s head is protected by a ‘lupine custodian’,94 an irony which Ælfric emphasises by describing the wolf as græge ‘grey’ (p. 51), which ‘evokes the familiar poetic formulation of the beast of battle who feeds on the bodies of the slain’95 and is reminiscent of the description of the bloodthirsty wulf 87 88 89 85 86

92 93 94 95 90 91

Ibid., p. 316. See Abbo (Winterbottom, pp. 78–9, and Hervey, p. 35), and Ælfric (pp. 49–50). Dominica II. post Pasca, in Ælfric’s ‘Catholic Homilies’, ed. by Clemoes, p. 314. Phelpstead, p. 37. Edmund is ‘“mocked in many ways” and “savagely beaten” before being tied to a tree (invoking the cross)’; Pinner, p. 41, see Abbo (Winterbottom, p. 78, and Hervey, pp. 33–5), and Ælfric (pp. 49–50). Ælfric also references Christ’s arrest by the Jews (p. 49), while Abbo ‘explicitly compares Edmund’s appearance before Hinguar with Christ’s before Pilate’; Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 29; see Winterbottom, pp. 78 and 79, and Hervey, pp. 33 and 37. Frantzen, p. 58. See Abbo (Winterbottom, pp. 78–80, and Hervey, p. 37), and Ælfric (p. 50). Faulkner, p. 43. See p. 33 above. Cubitt, ‘Folklore’, p. 197. Robert Stanton, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), p. 165. See, for example, Brunanburh, lines 64–5: þæt græge deor, / wulf on wealde ‘that grey beast, the wolf in the wood’. For more on Edmund’s wolf in comparison with the lupine Beast of Battle, see Thomas Honegger,

136

Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story […] græga ‘grey wolf’ of Maxims I who preys upon his human companion (lines 149–51).96 Edmund’s wolf is instead made tame by the power of God, lying down and holding the head of the lamb-like king between his legs97 and restoring the prelapsarian harmony that is ‘shattered by the Viking scourge’,98 a reminiscence of Isaiah 11.6: ‘The wolf shall dwell with the lamb: and the leopard shall lie down with the kid’. In spiritual terms, moreover, Edmund’s beheading is an ‘impossibility’ since, as is described in i Corinthians 11.3, ‘the head of every man is Christ’.99 A faithful sheep in Christ’s flock as well as a Good Shepherd himself, Edmund followed Christ the ‘head’ in life, serving as one of His limbs as did the apostles: God hyrde wæs petrus ⁊ god wæs paulus ⁊ gode wæron þa apostoli þe heora lif sealdon for godes folce ⁊ for rihtum geleafan ac heora godnys wæs of ðam heafde þæt is crist þe is heora heafod ⁊ hi sind his lima.100 [Peter was a good shepherd, and good was Paul, and good were the apostles who gave their lives for God’s people and for the right faith, but their goodness was of that head that is Christ, who is their head, and they are his limbs.]

Edmund’s physical beheading therefore serves no purpose as his spiritual ‘head’ is Christ and he is part of Christ’s body,101 from which – as made clear by his unrelenting faith even during his brutal torture – he could never be separated. Indeed, in Revelations 20.4–5 it is said that those who, like Edmund, ‘were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God’ are the first to rise from death and reunite with Christ in heaven.102 Thus, just as Edmund acted as the shepherd of his people by protecting his remaining flock from the wolves, Christ the Good Shepherd



96

99 97 98



100 101



102

‘Form and Function: The Beasts of Battle Revisited’, ES, 79 (1998), 289–98 (pp. 290–1). O’Camb argues that Ælfric’s Passio ‘closely parallels the language, themes and imagery of Maxims I.C’; ‘Wolf Lore’, p. 697. In the Passio, for example, Edmund’s followers shout Hwær eart þu nu, gefera? (p. 51) ‘Where are you now, friend?’ to the king’s head, the latter term recalling the man who takes the wolf as his geferan ‘friend’ in Maxims I, though unlike Edmund’s wolf this animal sliteð ‘tears apart’ its companion (line 147); see O’Camb, p. 697. See Abbo (Winterbottom, p. 81, and Hervey, p. 43), and Ælfric (pp. 51–2). Pinner, p. 42. Nicola Masciandaro, ‘Non potest hoc corpus decollari: Beheading and the Impossible’, in Heads Will Roll, ed. by Tracy and Massey, pp. 15–36 (p. 17). Dominica II. post Pasca, in Ælfric’s ‘Catholic Homilies’, ed. by Clemoes, pp. 313–14. Hinguar, on the other hand, is a membri (‘a part or organ of the body, limb, member’; OLD s.v. membrum, p. 1205) of Satan (p. 71), the antithesis of Edmund as a ‘limb’ of Christ. Masciandaro, p. 25.

137

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts protects the king’s lamb-like soul from the depredations of both the wolflike Vikings and the corpse-scavenging wolf, rewarding the king for his unwavering faith in Him and His Word. Edmund’s head is therefore immediately resurrected and given the power to speak by God, allowing it to be located by his surviving subjects and miraculously re-attached to its body, so that the king may await Judgement whole.103 The ‘reheading of Edmund’s physical body’104 thus presages the king’s spiritual re-heading, when he will meet Christ the head. Even in death Edmund continues to embody the Good Shepherd, ‘provid[ing] protection for the Christian people against external enemies’ when he defends the church in which he is interred from the predations of a group of thieves.105 While Abbo does not explicitly compare these people to wolves, their attempt at thievery recalls the Danes who, in the passage in which their martial tactics are likened to the behaviour of wolves, are described as semper studeat rapto vivere (p. 73) ‘always intent upon a career of theft’ (p. 23). Ælfric, meanwhile, who elsewhere describes thieves as wolf-like,106 perhaps hints at a lupine affinity between these robbers and the Danes when he describes the former as weargas ‘criminals’ (p. 55).107 Like the Danes, these graverobbers commit crimes against Edmund, the Christian community, and God, and they are devilish, ‘accursed’, and perhaps wolfish as a result.

A Lupine Source of the passiones: The Speech-stealing Wolf Superstition Although the similarity between wolves and criminals or outlaws may have in part informed the depiction of the Danes and the thieves at the shrine in these accounts, it is another cultural meaning associated with the wolf which provides an explanation not only for the head-guarding wolf episode, but for the events of Edmund’s martyrdom as a whole: the lupus 105 103 104



106 107

See Abbo (Winterbottom, p. 82, and Hervey, p. 45), and Ælfric (pp. 52–3). Faulkner, p. 43. Ciaran Arthur, ‘Giving the Head’s Up in Ælfric’s Passio Sancti Eadmundi: Postural Representations of the Old English Saint’, Philological Quarterly, 92 (2013), 315–33 (p. 328). See p. 26 above. Perhaps Ælfric’s use of this term might also be related to the fact that weargas ‘criminals’ are often depicted being hanged, the eventual fate of these thieves (Hi wurdon þa gebrohte to þam bisceope ealle and he het hi hon on heagum gealgum ealle (p. 55) ‘They were all then brought to the bishop, and he ordered that they all be hanged on the high gallows’), as is foreshadowed in their capture at the church when Edmund binds them: Men þa þæs wundrodon hu þa weargas hangodon (p. 55) ‘Then the people wondered at that, how those criminals hung’.

138

Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story in fabula. Indeed, in conjunction with an appreciation of the significance of the wolf and lamb metaphors in the passiones, consideration of the superstition as a potential source provides a cohesive and coherent reading of these narratives, of their allegorical meanings, and of the spiritual messages which they convey. It is highly likely that the lupus in fabula was known to both Abbo and Ælfric. That said, however, the issue of sources is complicated by the fact that Abbo may not have curated some – or indeed, the majority – of the content of the story, if the legends surrounding the circumstances of Edmund’s death did originate in oral sources. As such, if the basic plot of the story in Abbo’s version is true to the original stories which circulated, it is possible that the miracle of the head-protecting wolf in juxtaposition with the Vikings who attempt to silence the king had already been associated with the superstition by the original tellers and listeners of the story, and therefore that the allusions to the lupus in fabula found within Abbo’s account were already enmeshed in the fabric of the narrative before it reached him. Nonetheless, even if Abbo did have an oral source it is highly likely that he embellished the details of the story to some extent when he put it to parchment. His Passio is written ‘in the verbose and rhetorical style which he felt the theme demanded’108 and, as noted above, he is probably responsible for the many hagiographical allusions found within (if they were not from Dunstan). Abbo may also have made alterations to the story based on his own political and theological ‘preoccupations’, such as his ‘concern with the ideal Christian king’:109 the Passio is ‘dominated by his ideas’.110 As such, even if the superstition had already informed Abbo’s source narrative, the specific way in which it is featured in his written version was most likely the monk’s own doing. Alternatively, while the basic plot of the story – in particular, the posthumous miracles worked by the saint – may already have been in place before it was encountered by Abbo, it could be that the wolf’s speaking charge reminded the monk of the superstition and so, perceiving the potential to incorporate this legend into the narrative, he contrived the juxtaposition between the speech-stealing Vikings, the speech-protecting wolf, and their respective treatments of the king’s speaking head. It is also possible that Abbo simply ‘knew virtually nothing about St Edmund’s death and early cult’, that he composed the Passio entirely independently of any circulating oral stories and instead created ‘a patchwork of borrowings from well-known hagiographies’,111 intermixed with the speech-stealing wolf superstition. 110 111 108 109

Whitelock, p. 219. See Mostert, Political Theology, pp. 43–5. Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 59. Gransden, ‘Legends’, pp. 7–8.

139

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts In the midst all these hypotheticals, however, we may find some certainties, as both Abbo and Ælfric were certainly familiar with several of the texts in which the lupus in fabula appears. Indeed, ‘the many literary borrowings and allusions’ found within Abbo’s Passio itself evidence that the author ‘made use of a very well stocked library’ when composing this text.112 Since it is unknown whether Abbo composed the Passio while abroad or upon his return to France,113 this ‘well stocked library’ could have belonged to either of the Fleury or Ramsey abbeys. Fleury Abbey’s library was certainly well-supplied, with ‘between 600 and 800 manuscripts […] identified as having once been written in the scriptorium, or to have belonged’ to it.114 In fact, the Fleury library possessed a ‘status […] as a repository of classical knowledge’,115 and it is therefore to be expected that many of the manuscripts associated with Fleury and possibly housed at its library during Abbo’s time include some of the texts which treat of the lupus in fabula superstition. Virgil’s Eclogues are found in one ninth-century manuscript associated with Fleury, with extracts appearing in another of the same century,116 while Donatus’s commentary on the Adelphi is found in an eleventh-century manuscript which may have been written at the abbey, and which itself could be ‘a copy of an older Fleury MS’.117 Another manuscript associated with Fleury which dates to c. 900, meanwhile, contains Solinus’s Collectanea,118 while a ninth- or tenth-century manuscript containing Isidore’s Etymologiae ‘probably belonged to Fleury’.119 A ninth-century manuscript associated with Fleury which contains Donatus’s Ars major also features Murethach’s commentary on the same text,120 and parts of the collection of excerpts of Pliny’s Naturalis historia known as the Excerpta Eboracensia are found in five manuscripts associated with the abbey,121 Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, p. 22. Mostert, Political Theology, p. 45. 114 Ibid., p. 32. 115 Marco Mostert, The Library of Fleury: A Provisional List of Manuscripts, Middeleeuwse Studies en Bronnen, 3 (Hilversum: Verloren Publishers, 1989), p. 27. 116 Marco Mostert, ‘The Tradition of Classical Texts in the Manuscripts of Fleury’, in Medieval Manuscripts of the Latin Classics: Production and Use. Proceedings of the Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Leiden, 1993, ed. by Claudine A. Chavannes-Mazel and Margaret M. Smith (Los Altos Hills, CA: Anderson-Lovelace; London: Red Gull Press, 1996), pp. 19–40 (pp. 30 (BF097) and 32 (BF351)). 117 Beeson, p. 284. 118 Mostert, ‘Manuscripts of Fleury’, p. 35 (BF912). 119 Mostert, Political Theology, p. 79 n.5. 120 Mostert, ‘Manuscripts of Fleury’, p. 34 (BF775). 121 As seen above, however, this collection comprises excerpts only on astronomy; see p. 77 n.110 above. 112 113

140

Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story which date from the ninth to the tenth or eleventh centuries.122 One of the earliest, written c. 830, has a potential provenance of both Fleury and Ramsey,123 possibly because Abbo took it with him to England: this manuscript features corrections that may be the work of the monk himself.124 In fact, it may be that Ramsey Abbey became ‘a major centre of learning’ because of Abbo.125 Although ‘very few surviving manuscripts from Ramsey’s library have been identified’,126 the ‘wide range of sources’ utilised in the works of Abbo’s student, Byrhtferth (which reflect ‘the range of Abbo’s learning’ and ‘provide a valuable indication of what books were available to him in the Ramsey library’),127 suggest that ‘although a recent foundation, Ramsey soon acquired a substantial library, probably inter alia as a result of books brought to England by Abbo’.128 The texts cited by Byrhtferth in which the lupus in fabula superstition is discussed, and which could therefore have been brought to Ramsey by Abbo himself, include: Virgil’s Eclogues, Servius’s commentary on the Eclogues, Pliny’s Naturalis historia, Ambrose’s Hexameron, and Isidore’s Etymologiae,129 the latter of which Byrhtferth ‘extensively borrowed from’ and ‘seems to have known intimately’.130 In the Passio Eadmundi itself, moreover, Abbo remarks that prior to writing this text he was studying secularium litterarum (p. 68) ‘secular literature’ (p. 9), a claim evidenced by citations found in several of his works. In particular, he consulted Isidore’s Etymologiae for ‘writings composed both before and during his stay in England’,131 such as his Quaestiones Grammaticales,132 Explanatio in Calculo Victorii, and the Passio Eadmundi itself.133 For the Explanatio, Abbo utilised the two books of the Etymologiae in which the lupus in fabula is discussed (I and XII),134 while the Passio itself includes the same comparison between the wolf and lion as appears in the entry on wolves in Book XII.135 Abbo also cited from the Ibid., p. 31 (BF163), p. 33 (BF378 and BF380), p. 35 (BF1058), and p. 37 (BF1156). Gneuss and Lapidge, no. 423. 124 Mostert, Library, p. 106. 125 Cubitt, ‘Folklore’, p. 200. 126 Lapidge, Library, p. 266. 127 Ibid., pp. 121–2. 128 Ibid., p. 266. 129 See Lapidge’s list of Byrhtferth’s citations in ibid., pp. 267–74. 130 Di Sciacca, p. 53, citing Peter S. Baker and Michael Lapidge, eds and trans., Byrhtferth’s ‘Enchiridion’, EETS SS, 15 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. lxxxii. 131 Di Sciacca, p. 53. See also Mostert, Political Theology, p. 79 n.5. 132 See Wright, ‘Abbo of Fleury in Ramsey’, pp. 107 and 110. 133 Lapidge, Library, p. 245; and see also Winterbottom, ed., p. 72 n.17. 134 Lapidge, Library, p. 245. 135 Gransden, ‘Legends’, p. 7 n.3; see pp. 66–7 above. 122 123

141

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts book of Pliny’s Naturalis historia in which the lupus in fabula superstition appears (VIII) in his Explanatio.136 Additionally, Michael Winterbottom has identified a number of allusions to Virgil’s Eclogues in the Passio Eadmundi itself,137 particularly within Edmund’s speech to the Vikings, which ‘begins with a string of Virgilian echoes that equate the plight of Edmund with that of the expropriated shepherds of Ecl. 1 and 9’.138 Each of these borrowings, particularly those from Pliny and Isidore, suggest the likelihood that Abbo was acquainted with the superstition that the wolf could steal a person’s speech. If Abbo did allude to this superstition in his Passio, the reference is unlikely to have gone unnoticed by Ælfric, ‘an author of very wide reading, particularly in patristic sources’ who, like Abbo, ‘had access to a substantial library’.139 Though ‘there are no pre-Conquest inventories from […] Winchester’ Old Minster, where Ælfric spent the earlier part of his career, Michael Lapidge estimates that by Ælfric’s time the library housed around one hundred books.140 Indeed, ‘the wide range of patristic sources quoted and translated in Ælfric’s writings are almost certainly to be seen as a reflection of the resources of the library at the Old Minster during the later tenth century’.141 Since they made use of this library during the same period, ‘the writings of Lantfred and Wulfstan Cantor [also] help to illuminate the holdings’ of the Old Minster,142 thus providing additional indications of the works available to Ælfric in which the speech-stealing wolf superstition was discussed: Wulfstan Cantor cited Virgil’s Eclogues in his own work,143 and both he and Lantfred utilised Isidore’s Etymologiae.144 That the Etymologiae was known to Ælfric is ascertained by the numerous citations of this work in his Catholic Homilies; Lives of Saints; Preface to Genesis; his vernacular translation of Aldhelm’s Interrogationes Sigeuulfi in Genesin; his Grammar, and the glossary appended to it,145 all of which

Lapidge, Library, p. 246. See Winterbottom, ed., p. 72 n.24, and p. 73 n.5/39, and see also Lapidge, Library, p. 247. 138 Winterbottom, ed., p. 75 n.8/6. See also ibid., p. 6, p. 75 n.9, and p. 75 n.11. 139 Lapidge, Library, p. 250. 140 Ibid., pp. 57 and 60 respectively. 141 Ibid., p. 250. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144 Di Sciacca, pp. 52–3. See also Lapidge, Library, p. 241. 145 For details, see Lapidge, Library, p. 261, and for in-depth discussion of the influence of the Etymologiae on the Grammar and Preface to Genesis, see Robert T. Meyer, ‘Isidorian “glossae collectae” in Aelfric’s Vocabulary’, Traditio, 12 (1956), 398–405, and Brandon W. Hawk, ‘Isidorian Influences in Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis’, ES, 95 (2014), 357–66. 136

137

142

Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story demonstrate his ‘quite evident familiarity with’ this text.146 As with Abbo, Ælfric seems to have drawn specifically from the two books in which the lupus in fabula appears: he utilised information found in Book I for his Grammar,147 and it is possible that he took inspiration from Book XII for the discussions of elephants in his Exameron Anglice and Passio Sanctorum Machabeorum.148 For these passages, however, Ælfric may also have borrowed from Ambrose’s Hexameron, which he appears to have utilised when composing a passage on the same animal in his Sermo in natale unius confessoris,149 and which he also used in the Lives of Saints and Catholic Homilies.150 He was also familiar with the works of Jerome, whom he cites as a source for the Homilies.151 While this evidence suggests the likelihood that the lupus in fabula was known at least in passing to Ælfric, animals in general ‘seem to have fascinated’ the author, recurring ‘frequently throughout [his] works’ in passages for which he ‘regularly combines several different sources’, such as ‘the Bible, classical authors, and church fathers’.152 Suggesting that Ælfric ‘carefully researched the topic’ when he discussed animals in his own work,153 this indicates the likelihood that he investigated wolves – and encountered the speech-stealing wolf superstition, if he was not already familiar with

146



147



148



149 150



151



152



153

Luke M. Reinsma, ‘Rhetoric in England: The Age of Aelfric, 970–1020’, Communication Monographs, 44 (1977), 390–403 (p. 398). Helmut Gneuss, ‘The Study of Language in Anglo-Saxon England’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 72.1 (1990), 3–32 (p. 14). J. E. Cross, ‘The Elephant to Alfred, Ælfric, Aldhelm and Others’, Studia Neophilologica, 37 (1965), 367–73 (pp. 368–9). Ibid., pp. 369–73. See Lapidge, Library, p. 252. Nonetheless, ‘Ælfric makes comparatively little use of Ambrose’s works, perhaps because so few extracts from Ambrose were included in the Homiliary of Paul the Deacon, upon which Ælfric relied so heavily in his Catholic Homilies’; Bankert, Wegmann and Wright, p. 12. See the Latin preface to the Catholic Homilies in Clemoes, Ælfric’s ‘Catholic Homilies’, pp. 173–4 (p. 173), and for a translation, see ‘Translation of the Latin Preface to the First Series of Catholic Homilies’, in Ælfric’s Prefaces, ed. by Jonathan Wilcox, Durham Medieval Texts, 9 (Durham: Durham Medieval Texts, 1994), pp. 127–8 (p. 128). However, Ælfric might not have known Jerome’s works firsthand, since ‘he may have found the homilies’ of Jerome and his other named sources – Gregory the Great, Augustine, and Bede – ‘conveniently collected in some version of the popular homiliary of Paul the Deacon’; Stanley B. Greenfield and Daniel G. Calder, A New Critical History of Old English Literature (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1986), p. 77. It is also unclear whether Ælfric knew Jerome’s commentary on Habakkuk specifically. Letty Nijhuis, ‘“Sumum menn wile þincan syllic þis to gehyrenne”: Ælfric on Animals – His Sources and Their Application’, in Transmission and Transformation in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts, ed. by Kathleen Cawsey and Jason Harris (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), pp. 66 and 72 respectively. Ibid., p. 67.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts it – when composing his Passio Eadmundi. Indeed, Ælfric may hint at this when he describes the people who search for Edmund’s head, encounter the miraculous wolf, bury the king’s body, and worship at the church that is later built at his burial site with the words landfolc ‘land-folk’ (pp. 51 and 54) and landleodas ‘land-people’ (pp. 48 and 52), terms which curiously recall the rustici ‘country folk’ among whom Isidore (and others) claimed that the lupus in fabula proverb circulated. Moreover, in another of his saints’ lives from the second series of his Catholic Homilies written prior to – or possibly around the same time as – he composed the Passio,154 Ælfric appears to allude to the superstition of the speech-stealing powers of the wolf. In this text, the Passio Sanctorum Apostolorum Simonis et Iude, two wizards who are described as having ðotorodon swilce oðre wulfas ‘howled like other wolves’ are later seen to possess the ability to deprive others of their voices: Þa het se cyning clypian him to unbesorge men, and het hi habban geflit wið ða drymen. And hi dydon ða mid deofles cræfte þæt hi ealle wurdon adumbode155 ‘Then the king ordered some unloved men to be called to him, and he commanded them to have an argument with the sorcerors. And they then did so, so that they all became dumb’. If this is accepted as an allusion to the speech-stealing power of the wolf, this passage evidences not only that Ælfric knew of the superstition, but also that he considered it worthy of inclusion in his work.

The Wolf in Edmund’s Story While most of the narrative elements which make up the passiones are not unusual – the Danes were often depicted as wolf-like in Old English literature (to the extent that James W. Earl describes the wolf as ‘the most common symbol of the Vikings’);156 saints, by nature, are Christ-like;157 the heads of decapitated saints are often depicted miraculously speaking;158 and the taming of animals by saints, often wolves, was common in medieval European hagiography159 – the unification of the wolfen Vikings and the Christ- and lamb-like Edmund with the unique wolf which guards the



154 155

158 159 156 157

See p. 122 n.5 above. Passio Sanctorum Apostolorum Simonis et Iude, in Ælfric’s ‘Catholic Homilies’: The Second Series. Text, ed. by Malcolm Godden, EETS SS, 5 (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 280–7 (pp. 283 and 282 respectively). ‘Violence’, p. 140. See Phelpstead, p. 27. See p. 126 above. See Dominic Alexander, Saints and Animals in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), p. 34.

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story still-speaking head160 within these texts is highly distinctive. As well as the fact that wolves are associated with both the loss and retention of speech throughout the passiones, this suggests that the echoes of the lupus in fabula superstition found within these narratives are not present by chance. While the characterisation of the Vikings as wolf-like may be unoriginal, the juxtaposition between their rapaciousness and the submissiveness of the real wolf, and between the way in which each wolf(ish being) treats Edmund’s head and, by extension, his voice, is unique. The wolfish and devilish Vikings are speech-stealers; Abbo’s Danes, like the lupus in fabula who steals the voice of his victim if he sees them first,161 suddenly attack Edmund’s people so that quondam felix indigena suspirando gemens tacet (p. 75) ‘the once prosperous natives are reduced to sighs and groans and silence’ (p. 27). Similarly, Ælfric describes how se foresæda Hinguar færlice swa swa wulf on lande bestalcode and þa leode ofsloh, wæras and wif and þa unwittigan cild, and to bysmore tucode þa bilewitan cristenan (p. 46) ‘like a wolf the foresaid Hinguar suddenly stalked the land and slayed the people, men and women and the unwitting children, and shamefully harassed the innocent Christians’, the Dane taking Edmund’s people by surprise with his stealthy arrival before swiftly silencing them with death. Sona syððan (p. 46) ‘Immediately afterwards’, Hinguar sends a message to Edmund demanding that he submit (pp. 46–7), allowing the king no forewarning that the Vikings have attacked, nor leaving any survivors who might do so. Likewise, Abbo’s Danes hope to improvisum, ut contigit and incautum adoriatur (p. 74) ‘take him [Edmund] unawares’ and ‘accost the unsuspecting king’ (p. 23). Yet Edmund speaks out against the Danes despite their surprise attack, like the shepherd who wiðstandan þam reðan wulfe mid lare ⁊ mid gebedum ‘resists that savage wolf with preaching and with prayers’, as opposed to the hireling who geseh unrihtwisnysse ⁊ suwade ‘saw unrighteousness and was silent’.162 Denying their devilish temptations, in Ælfric’s Passio the king declares that Ne abihð næfre Eadmund Hingware on life, hæþenum heretogan (p. 49) ‘Edmund will never bow to Hinguar, the leader of the heathens, in life’. In Abbo’s narrative, meanwhile, Edmund explains his choice not to submit in terms of his speech, iterating that he will not live in silence as their slave but will remain faithful to Christ, his soul and his

The closest analogue is found ‘in an illumination in a mid-thirteenth-century Life of St. Alban, where a wolf and eagle guard the bodies of Christian martyrs’ (Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 169), which itself could be borrowed from the legend of Edmund; Gransden, ‘“Passio sancti Eadmundi”’, pp. 38–9 n.99. 161 See Isidore, Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, XII.ii.23–4, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. 162 Ælfric, Dominica II. post Pasca, in Ælfric’s ‘Catholic Homilies’, ed. by Clemoes, pp. 314–15. 160

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts voice free even if he should die,163 Honestius enim est perpetuam defendere libertatem, si non armis, saltem iugulis (p. 77) ‘For it is more proper to defend liberty without ceasing, if not by arms, then at least by speech’.164 Perhaps Edmund retains his speech because he ‘sees’ the wolf before he is seen,165 since although they attack the kingdom before Edmund is aware of their presence, by sending a messenger ahead of their arrival the Danes in fact warn the king of their approach. Most importantly, however, Edmund does not lose his faith in Christ: as Ambrose states, si in te insurrexerit lupus, petram cape et fugit. Petra tua Christus est ‘if a wolf should attack you, pick up a rock – and he turns in flight! Christ is your rock’.166 Christ is the ‘rock’ upon whom Edmund calls when the wolfish Danes first attempt to force him to submit and become their silent slave, determining to follow His righteous example even if it results in his death.167 Steadfast in his faith, Edmund thus does not fall prey to the versuta disputationis suae circumscriptione praevenerint ‘specious cleverness of their arguments’, nor to versutae disputationis venena ‘the venom of false and specious discussions’ of these wolfish heretics,168 unlike his bishop. Rather, like Ambrose’s vigilant man (si autem conmenta inpietatis eius agnoveris, iacturam piae vocis timere non poteris ‘if you recognise his wicked inventions, you need have no fear of losing the good Word’),169 Edmund does not lose sight of Christ and His teachings, and he is not silenced.

See Winterbottom, p. 78, and Hervey, p. 33. Thomas Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800– 1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 244. Iugulum means ‘throat’, and is sometimes used to describe ‘the cutting of a person’s throat, slaughter, sacrifice’; see OLD s.v. iugulum, p. 1078. ‘Sacrifice’ is a good fit for the term’s occurrence here, since Edmund is willing to die so that his people remain free, hence Hervey’s translation: ‘For it is more honourable to champion the cause of perpetual freedom, if not with arms, at any rate with life’ (p. 31). Head’s translation of iugulum with ‘speech’ is also suitable, however, since Edmund continues this phrase with ‘[…] quam reposcere amissam lacrimosis quaerimoniis (p. 77) ‘[…] than to spend tearful complaints in redemanding it when lost’, before going on to note that slaves cannot speak out against their masters (p. 31). Edmund, therefore, is defending the liberty of himself and his people both with his voice and, ultimately, with his life. 165 See Isidore, Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, XII.ii.23–4, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. 166 Exameron, ed. by Schenkl, p. 223, and Hexameron, trans. by Savage, p. 245. 167 See Abbo (Winterbottom, pp. 76–9, and Hervey, pp. 29–33), and Ælfric (p. 47). 168 Expositio Lucan, ed. by Schenkl, p. 302, and Commentary on Luke, trans. by Ní Riain, p. 206. Also like the lupine heretics Ambrose describes, the Danes animam petunt ‘want [Edmund’s] soul’, and nullum avaritiae finem inpietatisque noverunt ‘their greed and impiety are without limits’; Expositio Lucan, ed. by Schenkl, pp. 302–3, and Commentary on Luke, trans. by Ní Riain, p. 206. 169 Expositio Lucan, ed. by Schenkl, p. 302, and Commentary Luke, trans. by Ní Riain, p. 206. 163 164

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story Even as he is tortured Edmund continues to hold Christ as his ‘rock’, retaining his voice and constantly calling his Lord’s name: nec vincitur, semper Christum invocando flebilibus vocibus. (p. 78) [his constancy was unbroken, while without ceasing he called on Christ with broken voice] (p. 35) he symble clypode betwux þam swinglum mid soðan geleafan to Hælende Criste (p. 50) [amid the blows [of whips] he always called out to Christ the Saviour with true faith.]

This only infuriates Hinguar, however, who orders that the king be beheaded to steal his speech once and for all: nec sic Hinguar furcifer eum lanistis assensum prebere conspiceret, Christum inclamantem iugiter […] unde inter verba orationis eum arrepto pugione spiculator uno ictu decapitando hac luce privavit. (p. 79) [it was made apparent to the villainous Inguar that not even by these means could the king be made to yield to the agents of his cruelty, but that he continued to call upon the name of Christ […] while the words of prayer were still on his lips, the executioner, sword in hand, deprived the king of life, striking off his head with a single blow] (pp. 35–7) Þa geseah Hingwar, se arlease flotman, þæt se æþela cyning nolde Criste wiðsacan, ac mid anrædum geleafan hine æfre clypode: het hine þa beheafdian, and þa hæðenan swa dydon. Betwux þam þe he clypode to Criste þagit, þa tugon þa hæþenan þone halgan to slæge and mid anum swencge slogon him of þæt heafod, and his sawl siþode gesælig to Criste. (p. 50) [When Hinguar, the dishonourable seaman, saw that the holy king would not deny Christ, but with unwavering faith he continually called out, he then ordered that Edmund be beheaded, and the heathens did that. While he was still calling out to Christ, the heathens dragged the saint away to slaughter him, and struck off his head with one blow, and his soul happily journeyed to Christ.]

Apparently victorious in their efforts to silence the king, the Danes leave the head in the woods to be consumed by beasts and birds, never to speak again. Yet unbeknownst to them, the Danes are thwarted by the very animal which they are so alike, which not only fails to fulfil its own role as a corpse-consuming beast, but protects the head against the predations of other carnivorous animals: 147

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Quippe immanis lupus eo loci divina miseratione est repertus, qui illud sacrum caput inter brachia conplexus procumbebat humi, excubias impendens martyri, nec sibi depositum permisit ledere quampiam bestiarum, quod inviolabile, solo tenus prostratus, oblita voracitate servabat attentus. (p. 81) [In fact, a monstrous wolf was by God’s mercy found in that place, embracing the holy head between its paws, as it lay at full length on the ground, and thus acting as sentinel to the martyr. Nor did it suffer any animal whatever to injure its charge, but, forgetful of its natural voracity, preserved the head from all harm with the utmost vigilance, lying outstretched on the earth] (p. 43) Þa læg se græge wulf þe bewiste þæt heafod, and mid his twam fotum hæfde þæt heafod beclypped, grædig and hungrig, and for Gode ne dorste þæs heafdes abyrian, ac heold hit wið deor. (pp. 51–2) [Then the grey wolf that watched over that head lay there, and with his two feet he had clasped that head, greedy and hungry, and because of God he dared not taste of that head, but protected it from wild animals.]

In so doing, this wolf denies the traditional depiction of his species as a wantonly savage animal who haunts the battlefield, awaiting fresh meat to tear from the corpses of fallen warriors. Not only does this wolf recall and subvert its usual role as a flesh-eating Beast of Battle, but it also acts contrary to the lupine behaviour recorded in Isidore’s Etymologiae which, as O’Camb suggests, Ælfric or Abbo may have borrowed from ‘to lend authority to [their] explication[s] of that predator’s behaviour’ and to heighten the miraculousness of God’s taming of the animal.170 Thus, while Isidore’s wolf rabie rapacitatis quaequae invenerit trucidet ‘slaughters whatever it finds in a frenzy of violence’ and is such a Rapax autem bestia et cruoris appetens ‘Violent beast, eager for gore’ that quidquid pede presserit non vivit ‘whatever they tread on with their paws does not live’, Edmund’s wolf does not tread on nor slaughter its charge, but uses its paws to embrace this holy object and keep it safe. Nor does this wolf steal the speech of the miraculous head; instead, he deponit feritatis audaciam ‘puts aside his bold ferocity’, though not because he praevisum senserit ‘perceives that he is seen first’,171 but because ‘God’s power prevents the wolf’s deadly feet from silencing the

‘Wolf Lore’, p. 697. Isidore, Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, XII.ii.24, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. Although, if Edmund’s entire head comes alive rather than just his mouth – it is not made clear which is the case – perhaps he has also literally seen the wolf first.

170 171

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story saint’s voice’.172 Having made Christ his ‘rock’ against his lupine adversaries in life, in death Edmund is gifted immunity from the speech-stealing wolf by God. Indeed, like his beheading Edmund’s silencing is also an impossibility, not only because of his faith but because his head represents Christ, the Word of God,173 as Abbo makes clear when he states that Palpitabat mortuae linguae plectrum infra meatus faucium, manifestans in se verbigenae magnalia (p. 81) ‘The chords of the dead man’s tongue vibrated within the passages of the jaws, thus displaying the miraculous power of Him who was born of the Word’ (p. 41). Although the world is full of ‘wolves’ such as the real wolf and the devilish Hinguar who, like Jerome’s ‘evening wolves’, ‘“fly eager to eat” the flesh of the word of God’,174 the Word cannot be silenced simply because one of its speakers is slain.175 The material world may crumble, but the Word is eternal: ‘The grass is withered, and the flower is fallen: but the word of our Lord endureth for ever’ (Isaiah 40.8). Though they cannot silence the Word, the Danes are able to conceal it by hiding it in the darks woods, like Ambrose’s heretical wolves who lucem Christi […] obducere et quantum in ipsis est fuscare conantur ‘veil the light of Christ and, in so far as they can, they obscure it’.176 Edmund’s followers must therefore seek the head in the dense, sharp, and predator-infested brambles,177 just as all humankind must seek Christ the head

O’Camb, p. 697. ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the onlybegotten of the Father), full of grace and truth’ (John 1.14); ‘And he [Christ] was clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood; and his name is called, The Word of God’ (Revelations 19.13). 174 Jerome, Commentary on Habakkuk, trans. by Scheck, p. 192. 175 The passiones themselves evidence that the Word can never be silenced, since God keeps a witness to the martyrdom (the armour-bearer) safe from the Vikings. In Ælfric, this ensures that the king’s followers are able to locate the head/Word and that the story of his death can be told (pp. 50–1), the latter of which is also the case in Abbo (Winterbottom, p. 80, and Hervey, p. 39), who even refers to Dunstan’s relation of the story as pabulo divini verbi (p. 67) ‘the food of God’s word’ (p. 9). 176 Expositio Lucan, ed. by Schenkl, pp. 301–2, and Commentary on Luke, trans. by Ní Riain, p. 205. 177 In Abbo, the head in silvam cui vocabulum est Haeglesdun recedentes asportaverunt, ac inter densa veprium frutecta longius proiectum occuluerunt (pp. 79–80) ‘was carried by them [the Danes] as they retired into a wood, the name of which is Haglesdun, and was thrown as far as possible among the dense thickets of brambles, and so hidden’ (p. 37). In Ælfric, the Danes behyddon þæt heafod þæs halgan Eadmundes on þam þiccum bremelum (p. 50) ‘hid the head of the holy Edmund in the thick brambles’. Thorns and thistles are a product of the Fall (see Genesis 3.17–18) and, in the Old English Rune Poem, it is said that þ[orn] byþ ðearle scearp; ðegna gehwylcum / anfeng ys yfyl, ungemetun reþe / manna gehwylcun ðe him mid resteð (lines 7–9) ‘The thorn is severely sharp, harmful 172 173

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts and Word in the spiritual wilderness that is life on earth. Yet, if they have faith in Christ, His Word will provide ‘a lamp to [their] feet, and a light to [their] paths’ (Psalm 118.105), continuing to call to them until they find it, like Edmund’s head which: designando locum patria lingua dicens, ‘Her, her, her’ […] Nec umquam eadem repetendo clamare destitit quoad omnes ad se perduxit. (p. 81) [indicated the place where it lay by exclaiming in their native tongue, Here! Here! Here! […] And the head never ceased to repeat this exclamation, till all were drawn to it] (p. 41) him andwyrde […], ‘Her! Her! Her!’, and swa gelome clypode, andswarigende him eallum, swa oft swa heora ænig clypode, oþ þæt hi ealle becomen þurh ða clypunga him to. (p. 51) [answered them […], ‘Here! Here! Here!’, and in this way continually cried out, answering them all as often as any of them called, until they all came to it by means of that calling.]

As with Christ the Good Shepherd, Edmund’s head ‘calleth his own sheep’ (John 10.3),178 his people, who ‘follow him, because they know his voice’ (John 10.4). Thus, in the same way that Edmund achieved salvation and ascended to meet Christ, the head of his spiritual ‘body’, through his faith in the Word, Edmund’s people locate the king’s head by following the call of his voice, just as Christ’s followers will meet Him if they follow the call of His Word. Faithful sheep who unerringly follow Edmund (Christ the Shepherd) and his head (the Word) despite the Danes’ (Satan’s) efforts to take both from them, Edmund’s subjects portray a more attainable role for the average Christian than the promise of spiritual fulfilment in torture and martyrdom. Although Edmund is ‘a type of holy character whose actions can be admired and subsequently emulated by the text’s



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to the grasp of all thanes, immensely savage to every man who rests among them’. The brambles in the woods in the passiones might therefore symbolise the introduction of sin to the paradisal East Anglia by the Danes: in Abbo, before the Danish invasion, the woods were amoenitatae gratissima (p. 70) ‘delightfully pleasant’ (p. 15), but are later depicted as the lair of the wolf (see p. 133 above); in Ælfric the Danes to bysmore synd getawode ‘brought to shame’ the previously bilewitan ‘innocent’ East-Anglians (p. 46). The people who seek the head, therefore, might be taken to represent all humankind in a postlapsarian world, exiles from God (see p. 21 n.11 above) who must therefore seek Christ and the Word if they hope to attain the eternal heavenly home at the end of their life on earth. The verb clypian ‘to call’ is also found in Wulfstan’s description of the hyrde ‘shepherd’ who must defend his flock against the wodfræca werewulf ‘ravening man-wolf’ by crying out; see p. 52 above. Indeed, one might compare Wulfstan’s ravenous werewolf to the wolfish Vikings of the passiones.

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story audience’,179 his subjects demonstrate that the average Christian can also attain salvation if they remain on the path of Christ and His Word.

Conclusion: Ælfric’s lupus in fabula Ælfric’s lay audience were just such average Christians; his Lives of Saints were ‘vehicles for delivering moral messages’,180 written specifically for the spiritual improvement of those outside the clergy who were unfamiliar with the Latin language.181 Accordingly, Ælfric’s Passio is ‘rather more homiletic in focus’ than Abbo’s,182 and the author simplifies his source text both to fit his intended audience’s intellectual capacity and to ensure their understanding and enjoyment of the stories.183 Perhaps as a result of this ‘didactic and edificatory’ aim of the Lives,184 and to guarantee that his audience understood the spiritual lessons that he intended to be gained from his Passio Eadmundi, Ælfric places greater emphasis on the allegorical significance of the speech-stealing wolves to the moral message of his narrative.185 While Abbo’s Passio was written for a learned monastic audience,186 who could plausibly be expected to understand the metaphorical

179



180 181



182 183



184 185



186

Elaine Treharne, ed., Old and Middle English, c.890–c.1450: An Anthology, 3rd edn (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 144. Gourlay, p. 133. See the Latin preface to the Lives in Ælfric’s ‘Lives of Saints’, ed. and trans. by Skeat, i, 2–5. Treharne, p. 144. See the Latin preface to the Lives in Ælfric’s ‘Lives of Saints’, ed. and trans. by Skeat, i, 2–5 (pp. 4–5). The Passio Eadmundi specifically is ‘about one-third the length of’ Abbo’s (Phelpstead, p. 31), as Ælfric ‘removes Abbo’s elaborate rhetorical flourishes, shortens the speeches, and makes the narrative more brisk’; Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English, 8th edn (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), p. 204. He also ‘simplifies for his unlearned audience the more complex ideas in the original’, such as when he omits Abbo’s ‘pseudo-scientific’ explanation of how Edmund’s decapitated head still speaks; Cecily Clark, ‘Ælfric and Abbo’, ES, 49 (1968), 30–6 (p. 34); and see Winterbottom p. 81, and Hervey, p. 41. For more on Ælfric’s style, see Peter Clemoes, ‘Ælfric’, in Continuations and Beginnings, ed. by Stanley, pp. 176–209. Treharne, p. 142. Clemoes notes that ‘allegory and classification were the modes of thought most familiar to [Ælfric]’, and that in his works, ‘allegorical exegesis was applied to scripture to extract from it what Ælfric called þæt gastlice andgit, the spiritual sense, as against þæt anfealde andgit, the literal, specifically historical meaning’; ‘Ælfric’, p. 188. His original audience may have been the Ramsey Abbey monks themselves, whom Abbo notes felt a written copy of the Passio would be posteris profuturum (p. 67) ‘edifying to future generations’ (p. 7).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts meaning and spiritual significance of the monk’s understated hints towards the speech-stealing wolf superstition in his Passio,187 Ælfric elucidated, emphasised, and expanded upon the allusions to the speech-stealing wolf found in his source, rendering them an integral component of the moral message of his adaptation. As a result, at the opening of his Passio Ælfric excises much of the long-winded portrait of the Danes given by Abbo, ‘instead […] jump[ing] straight to the comparison of the Danes with the wolf’.188 In so doing, Ælfric ‘keep[s] the affective force of the simile while eliminating confusing detail’,189 making clear that Hinguar’s wolfishness is directly related to his devilishness (pp. 45–6), clarifying the exact meaning of his wolf simile where Abbo does not make the association explicit.190 This description of only Hinguar as wolf-like, as opposed to all of the Danes in Abbo’s version, also invites like-for-like comparison of the Viking leader with the real wolf later in the Passio, creating ‘in Ælfric’s text, as not in Abbo’s, […] a link between the passion and the miracles’.191 In fact, though ‘the thematic symmetries do not depend on counting lines’, each ‘wolf’ ‘appear[s] at about the same point in the two narrative sections’ (the passion and the miracles) of Ælfric’s Passio.192 This was likely intentional, given that it explains why ‘the miracle which Ælfric introduces [first] is not the talking head, but the tame wolf’, in a reversal of the order of events found in Abbo’s Passio.193 Rather than being ‘curiously inept’,194 Ælfric’s rearrangement of his source narrative structurally reflects the thematic linkage between the wolf and the lupine Hinguar, and emphasises the contrast between the speech-stealing wolfish Dane and the speech-protecting wolf. Ælfric’s portrayal of the real wolf is likewise less affected than Abbo’s. While the latter’s wolf is immanis (p. 81) ‘monstrous’ (p. 43), Ælfric’s is simply græge (p. 51) ‘grey’, ‘a distinctively English wolf’ that would be ‘more real and more present to an English audience’.195 However, this alteration does not serve only to create immediacy for his audience; rather, it suggests that the devil – or any other entity who might prey upon Christians – may not always seem monstrous, much like the ‘ravening wolves’ Abbo had added several of the works in which the lupus in fabula appears to the Ramsey Abbey library, and Byrhtferth’s engagements with these texts suggest that Abbo may have encouraged their study during his stay there; see p. 141 above. 188 Stanton, ‘Translation and Hagiography’, p. 158. See p. 134 above. 189 Clark, p. 33. 190 See Winterbottom, p. 73, and Hervey, p. 23. See also pp. 132–4 above. 191 Benskin, p. 14. 192 Ibid. 193 Stanton, ‘Translation’, p. 160. 194 Needham, ed., Ælfric: Lives of Three English Saints, p. 51 n.122. 195 Stanton, Culture, p. 165.

187

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Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story of Matthew 7.15 who are disguised in ‘the clothing of sheep’. Indeed, though Ælfric’s wolf is more naturalistic, the miracle of its tameness is more strongly emphasised; for Abbo ‘the wolf’s guardianship is merely a supplementary miracle (it was one the Creator added, annexuit)’,196 while for Ælfric it was micel wundor (p. 51) ‘a great wonder’. Moreover, while Abbo’s wolf is oblita voracitate (p. 81) ‘forgetful of its natural voracity’ (p. 43) and ‘utterly transformed […] into a tame animal’, Ælfric’s wolf remains grædig and hungrig (p. 52) ‘greedy and hungry’, ‘retain[ing] its savage nature, but actively and explicitly repress[ing] it’,197 and acting only swylce he tam wære (p. 52) ‘as if he were tame’. Unlike Abbo, Ælfric also does not promise that this wolf, or one like it, will never be seen again.198 Instead, the animal accompanies Edmund’s followers as they take the head back to their settlement, but turns back toward his rightful place in the wilderness as they reach the outskirts of human civilisation (p. 52), shedding off his temporary domestication and returning to his naturally rapacious character, and to his natural state as an ‘outlaw from civilization’.199 Ælfric’s wolf is thus ‘truly fierce in a more wolf-like way’,200 heightening the wonder of its taming while emphasising the fleetingness of this miracle, with ‘nature […] still red in tooth and claw’, only ‘held at bay for a moment by the civilizing force of God’.201 In characterising the lupine charge in this way, Ælfric makes clear that just as the devil may clothe himself as a sheep, wolves remain unchanged within even if they don the ‘clothing’ of tameness. Likewise, just as the real wolf remains grædig and hungrig (p. 52) ‘greedy and hungry’ for the head, Satan is constantly greedy and hungry for ‘the flesh of the word of God’,202 which he too will devour if given the opportunity. Reiterating the same message as earlier in the Passio, where the Danes’ surprise arrival in East Anglia represents ‘the suddenness of the devil’s attack’, the possibility that the wolf might shake off its servility and return to its savage ways at any moment likewise warns that ‘no Christian can afford to relax his vigilance for the devil may attack at any minute’;203 that Satan’s insatiable hunger for the Word of God can be held at bay only by faith in His power to triumph over the demon. Ælfric thus allegorises life on earth as the path upon which Edmund’s people travel in the dense woods, their journey as they follow the call of the king’s voice and seek his head a metaphor for the path of righteousness. Faulkner, p. 45. See Winterbottom, p. 81, and Hervey, p. 41. Stanton, ‘Translation’, p. 163. 198 See Winterbottom, p. 81, and Hervey, p. 43. 199 Harlan-Haughey, p. 40. 200 Stanton, ‘Translation’, p. 163. 201 Harlan-Haughey, p. 40. 202 Jerome, Commentary on Habakkuk, trans. by Scheck, p. 192. 203 Blake, p. 335. 196 197

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts They must always follow this path, continually seeking Christ the head of humankind by keeping faith and following the call of His Word, as ‘Faith […] cometh by hearing; and hearing by the word of Christ’ (Romans 10.17). Just as Edmund stayed true to his faith and remained on the path towards eternal salvation even as he was brutally tortured, his people follow this literal path which leads to the same end: salvation with Christ. Yet the good Christian cannot simply be a passive recipient of God’s teachings. They must ‘have confidence in the Lord with all [their] heart’ and ‘In all [their] ways think on him’, using their own voices to prove their faith by praising Christ and His Word while they seek Him in eternity, so that ‘he will direct [their] steps’ (Proverbs 3.5–6), as: if thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For, with the heart, we believe unto justice; but, with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. […] For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved. (Romans 10.9–13)

The followers of the Word must not merely receive it but actively speak it themselves if they are to follow the correct path and meet their ‘head’, Christ, and the salvation promised by faith within him. Thus, while it is almost by chance that the head is found in Abbo’s Passio – the followers of Edmund do not call to the head but only to each other, while the head Nec umquam eadem repetendo clamare destitit quoad omnes ad se perduxit (p. 81) ‘Never ceased to repeat this exclamation, till all were drawn to it’ (p. 41) – in Ælfric’s adaptation Edmund’s people call specifically to their gefera ‘friend’, the head, who only replies swa oft swa heora ænig clypode (p. 51) ‘as often as any of them called’. Yet, as is made evident by the grædig and hungrig (p. 52) ‘greedy and hungry’ wolf guarding the king’s head, and the relentless efforts of the wolfish Danes to force Edmund to submit right up to the moment they kill him, the devil is unrelenting in his efforts to lead Christ’s followers astray from the path to salvation, and can be thwarted only by unrelenting faith in Christ and His Word. Such miracle-inducing faith, as the holy King Edmund demonstrated, involves constant and unwavering devotion proclaimed aloud, a relentless invocation of Christ even in the face of bodily suffering and the attacks of a vicious, speech-stealing wolf: he symble clypode betwux þam swinglum mid soðan geleafan to Hælende Criste (p. 50) ‘amid the blows [of whips] he always called out to Christ the Saviour with true faith’. Likewise, Edmund’s followers who seek the allegorical head, Christ, continually use their voices to call upon Him and His Word. The wolves in Ælfric’s story thus teach an unequivocal lesson to the hagiographer’s lay audience. If any person is to achieve salvation at the end of the path that is life, they must put their faith in the ‘rock’ that is 154

Abbo, Ælfric, and the Wolf in Edmund’s Story Christ and His Word, so that they may thwart the depredations of the speech-stealing, wolfish devil and his heretical human agents. There is no room for silent complacency on this journey through the thorny wilderness of life. For, just as the wolf guarding Edmund’s head would be free to devour its charge should the king’s followers not answer the call of the Word by responding in kind, the speech-stealing devil is ready to pounce at the faintest flicker of doubt or the slightest diversion from the path of righteousness; if any Christian falls ‘by the way side, where the word is sown’, the devil will ‘immediately […] cometh, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts’ (Mark 4.15). Hence, it is imperative that every Christian holds the Word within his heart and proclaims it with his mouth for, as Ambrose states, mutus est enim qui verbum dei non eadem qua est gloria confitetur ‘when we no longer proclaim the glory of the Word of God in all its truth then indeed we are dumb’.204



204

Expositio Lucan, ed. by Schenkl, p. 302, and Commentary on Luke, trans. by Ní Riain, p. 206.

155

5 The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf

T

hat slippery term aglæca ‘awesome opponent, ferocious fighter’1 is a well-known cornerstone of Beowulf scholarship. Found twenty times within this poem – more than all attestations in every other text combined – the meaning of this term is contentious given that it is used not only of Grendel, his mother, and the other monsters of the poem, but also of Sigmund (the dragon-slaying member of the Vǫlsung family), and the hero of the poem himself, Beowulf. Yet although the implications of this are frequently debated,2 the usage of aglæca for both hero and monsters is just one example of the ‘intriguing number of intimate links between Beowulf and his most famous foe’, Grendel.3 Both are also termed healðegnas ‘hall-thanes’ (lines 142 and 719) and described as earm ‘wretched’ (lines 1351 and 2368); Beowulf is as strong as thirty men (lines 379–81), while Grendel has the strength to carry off thirty men during his first foray into Heorot (lines 122–3); and both are overcome with an overwhelming fury when in battle (lines 709 and 703). Many of the attributes common to Beowulf and this creature are also displayed when the hero comes to blows with Grendel’s mother, the warrior mirroring both the earlier behaviour of her slaughtered son, and of the furious mourning mother herself. During the scenes within which the hero grapples with the monsters, ‘the difference between non-human and human is perceived, in one sense, in terms of predator and prey/predation and agonistic contesting’,4 1 2



3



4



DOE s.v. āg-lǣca [accessed 10 August 2021]. See, for example, Doreen M. E. Gillam, ‘The Use of the Term “Æglæca” in Beowulf at Lines 893 and 2592’, Studia Germanica Gandensia, 3 (1961), 145–69; Marion Lois Huffines, ‘OE āglǣce: Magic and Moral Decline of Monsters and Men’, Semasia, 1 (1974), 71–81; Sherman M. Kuhn, ‘Old English āg-lǣca – Middle Irish óchlach’, in Linguistic Method: Essays in Honor of Herbert Penzl, ed. by Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), pp. 213–30; and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, ‘The Aglæca and the Law’, American Notes and Queries, 20 (1982), 66–8. Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the ‘Beowulf’Manuscript (Cambridge: Brewer, 1995), p. 32. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 171.

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts whereby Grendel and his mother ‘ravage like […] predator[s], whereas Beowulf insists on contesting with [them] like a conspecific adversary (that is, as a member of the same biological species)’.5 Grendel, in particular, stalks the hall at Heorot and devours the unfortunate Danes bones, blood, and all, but Beowulf ‘reject[s] the role of prey and […] establish[es] himself as Grendel’s worthy opponent’.6 The animal role assumed by the monsters is not merely that of an unspecified predator which depredates upon those species weaker than itself, however, as both Beowulf and the Grendelkin are specifically associated with one animal in particular: the wolf. Wulf, of course, is the suffix of Beowulf’s name. Although this hero’s moniker is often interpreted as a kenning, ‘bee-wolf’, with the suffix taken to ‘represent not an actual wolf but rather […] “one who acts wolfishly towards”’ bees (beon), i.e., the bear,7 a parallel between this character and a werewolf from the Vǫlsunga saga may suggest that the suffix functions as an appellation invoking not an ursine predator, but a lupine one. This is also suggested by the fact that the predatorial monsters who, in some ways, Beowulf is so alike, are also said to inhabit a land enclosed by wulfhleoþu ‘wolf-slopes’, with Grendel’s Mother also described on two occasions as a brimwylf ‘sea-wolf’. Both of these lupine terms are hapax legomena. Suggesting that the author of Beowulf invented not one but two wolf-related terms for their poem, the significance of this should not be understated when one also considers that the Grendelkin possess numerous characteristics which are strongly reminiscent of the nature of wolves. Yet the Grendelkin are not merely animals, but creatures whose monstrosity stems from the fact that they do not belong to only one category of being, but are humanoid, bestial, and demonic entities all at once. This, as described in chapter one, is congruent with the fact that the monsters belong to the Old English literary tradition in which wolves were associated with outlaws and criminals, a tradition which may be encapsulated in the term wearg, a word frequently used to name or describe outlawed or criminal creatures, such as the Grendelkin.8 These beings are weargas in every sense of the word,9 outlawed criminals and demons whose multifaceted identities – even including their roles as water-monsters, as will be seen – are centred around one core characteristic: their wolfishness. Ward Parks, ‘Prey Tell: How Heroes Perceive Monsters in Beowulf’, JEGP, 92 (1993), 1–16 (p. 2). 6 Ibid. 7 Abram, p. 393. 8 See pp. 38–53 above. 9 See BT s.v. wearg(-h), p. 1177, and wearg, p. 1177. See pp. 47–52 above.

5

158

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf In turn, these monsters are directly juxtaposed with another ‘wolf in the story’, Beowulf, the eponymous hero of the poem who lives up to the lupine suffix of his name. The possibility that the characterisation of both the Grendelkin and of Beowulf is in part drawn from real-world wolf behaviour is discussed in the following pages, as is the suggestion that these figures have much in common with analogous depictions of other wolves or wolf-like creatures, with one lupine tradition which may have served as a source – the superstition of the speech-stealing wolf – examined in detail in the latter part of this chapter. Although it is not possible to determine whether the anonymous Beowulf-poet knew of the lupus in fabula, the prevalence of manuscripts circulating in early medieval England containing many of the texts in which it appears, and the continued usage of such texts by scholars throughout early medieval England, suggest the possibility that this superstition was known to a ‘cultured individual’ such as the Beowulf-poet.10 Indeed, the poet appears to have possessed an acute knowledge of both the wolf’s natural behaviour and of its cultural significance, such that it seems highly likely that they were familiar with the legends of this animal’s speech-stealing powers. That said, given that the range of ways in which Beowulf may be interpreted are so many and so varied, this reading is not intended to preclude all other interpretations by establishing that there is a lupus in fabula ‘design’ to the poem. Rather, by considering the non-binary nature of Beowulf and the Grendelkin and by exploring the animalistic facets of these characters’ identities in detail through a reading which, for the first time, incorporates the lupus in fabula superstition, the intention of this analysis is to extend and add another dimension to the aglæca debate, and to shed new light upon some of the characters, events, and cruxes of the first part of the poem. In the words of Margaret E. Goldsmith: ‘such interpretations are in the nature of things unprovable: they will commend themselves only insofar as they throw light in some obscure places and reveal connections of ideas where before there appeared to be awkward juxtapositions’.11 It is hoped that by approaching the poem with the wolf (in the story) in mind, this analysis may throw a little light on the monsters who travelled to Heorot, wan under wolcnum ‘dark beneath the clouds of night’ (lines 650–1), and the extraordinary warrior who ended their reign of nightly terror.



10 11

Klaeber, Christian Elements, p. 71. ‘The Christian Perspective in Beowulf’, Comparative Literature, 14 (1962), 71–90 (pp. 81–2).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Grendel and His Mother: Wolfish Worriers of Heorot To date, there have been no attempts to identify a specific species of animal to which the predatory Grendelkin are akin, with one exception. In 1886, Walter W. Skeat sought to demonstrate that Grendel ‘may have belonged to that particular kind of beast which is known by the general name of bears’, expounding upon what he believed to be the ursine facets of the monsters.12 Yet despite being far less outlandish than Sedgefield’s interpretation of Wulf’s characters as animals, there has not been a resurgence of interest in Skeat’s theory as there was with Sedgefield’s.13 Similar to the way in which Orton takes Sedgefield’s theory as a starting point for his new reading of Wulf, therefore, the following section will begin with a reconsideration of Skeat’s likewise ‘far too hastily rejected’ interpretation of the Grendelkin as modelled upon a specific predatory animal native to the British Isles.14 One certainly cannot refute Skeat’s observations that the monsters, like all animals, are ‘dumb beasts’ who, as with the majority of top predators native to Europe, attack at night.15 Likewise, that Grendel ‘prefers not to attack frontally but to “ensnare” (besyrwan, [line] 713) through stealthy nighttime assaults’,16 and the manner in which he tears apart the carcasses of his victims, crushes their bones, drinks their blood, and devours their flesh, are certainly ‘the mode[s] of procedure of a carnivorous beast’.17 Skeat interprets the Grendelkin as bears specifically for a number of reasons, including the facts that they are nocturnal; that Grendel ‘trusted to the strength of his grip or hug’, which Skeat relates to the ‘proverbial’ ‘bear’s hug’; that ‘the brown European bear was common enough in wild places’; that the bear, ‘like Grendel, […] is “a solitary animal”, and “an excellent swimmer”’, whose ‘retreat is often a cavern’; that Beowulf’s ‘slaying [of] Grendel’s mother’ was a ‘harder task’ than killing her son, which ‘might easily happen in the case of an old she-bear, especially if angered by the loss of her whelp’; and that the name Beowulf, or ‘bee-wolf’, ‘is applicable to no quadruped but the brown bear’, which Skeat takes as ‘a remarkably strong hint’ that the hero ‘was a slayer of bears in particular’.18 Yet while Skeat is correct that the brown bear is mostly solitary; that it is sometimes – though not always, especially in the case of female bears with cubs – nocturnal; and that this species sometimes chooses caves for

12

15 16 17 18 13 14

‘On the Signification of the Monster Grendel in the Poem of Beowulf; with a Discussion of Lines 2076–2100’, Journal of Philology, 15 (1886), 120–31 (p. 121). See p. 91 above for more on Sedgefield. ‘An Approach to Wulf and Eadwacer’, p. 240. ‘Signification’, pp. 123–4. Parks, p. 6. This is also true of Grendel’s Mother; see lines 1279–80. Skeat, ‘Signification’, p. 122. Ibid., pp. 123–4.

160

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf denning,19 the rest of his evidence is less accurate. The ‘bear’s hug’ appears to have become proverbial only as recently as the nineteenth century,20 and while brown bears may have been ‘common enough in wild places’ in Scandinavia,21 this animal probably became extinct in Britain by or during the beginning of the medieval period.22 Beowulf’s name, moreover, may not necessarily have anything to do with bears.23 Skeat does briefly consider the comparability of the Grendelkin to wolves, although his objections do not bear out (no pun intended). Only one observation Skeat makes – that ‘wolves are often seen in droves: whereas we are expressly told that Grendel and his mother were a pair (line 1347)’ – is based in ecological fact, although, that said, it is not uncommon for wolves to live alone or in pairs, and ‘females have been known to raise pups alone’,24 as Grendel’s Mother appears to have done with her son. That Skeat uses the term ‘droves’ also betrays a typically negative Victorian view of the animal – which also led James Edmund Harting, the scholar who treated of ‘British Animals Extinct within Historic Times’ from an ostensibly scientific viewpoint, to describe wolves as an ‘infestation’ throughout his chapter on the species25 – as does Skeat’s repetition of the stereotype that wolves are ‘of a cowardly nature’, which is presented as fact despite having no ecological basis.26 There is also good reason to dispute Skeat’s objections purely on the basis that the wolf was the only mammalian top predator of which those living in early medieval England certainly had first-hand experience, since both bear and lynx had become locally extinct around the beginning of the early medieval period.27 Skeat’s conclusions and the possibility that the Grendelkin could be modelled on wolves, then, warrant reassessment.

19

22 20 21

25 23 24



26 27

See Jon E. Swenson et al., ‘Brown Bear (Ursus arctos; Eurasia)’, in Bears of the World: Ecology, Conservation and Management, ed. by Vincenzo Penteriani and Mario Melletti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 139–61 (pp. 147, 148, and 152 respectively). OED s.v. ‘bear hug, n.’ [accessed 9 August 2021]. Skeat, ‘Signification’, p. 123. Andy Hammon, ‘The Brown Bear’, in Extinctions and Invasions: A Social History of British Fauna, ed. by Terry O’Connor and Naomi Sykes (Oxford: Windgather Press, 2010), pp. 95–103 (p. 100). See pp. 176–7 below. Mech and Boitani, p. 31. British Animals Extinct within Historic Times, with Some Account of British Wild White Cattle (London: Trübner, 1880), pp. 115–205. ‘Signification’, p. 125. Hammon, p. 100, and David Hetherington, ‘The Lynx’, in Extinctions and Invasions, ed. by O’Connor and Sykes, pp. 75–82 (pp. 77–9). The youngest palaeontological evidence of lynx in Britain dates to ad 425–600, although cultural evidence suggests the animal may have survived in Scotland until ad 900, becoming rarer as the medieval period went on; see ibid.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Parallels may be drawn between Grendel’s hunting tactics and the behaviour of wolves specifically, for example. As noted above, Grendel (and his mother) ‘prefer[] not to attack frontally but to “ensnare” (besyrwan, [line] 713) through stealthy nighttime assaults’;28 wolves do sometimes ambush their prey, and they often hunt at night.29 Having ‘ensnared’ his prey, Grendel quickly consumes the unfortunate victim’s entire body: Ne þæt se aglæca yldan þohte, ac he gefeng hraðe forman siðe slæpendne rinc, slat unwearnum, bat banlocan, blod edrum dranc, synsnædum swealh; sona hæfde unlyfigendes eal gefeormod, fet ond folma.

(lines 739–45)

[Nor did that fierce one think to hesitate, but at the first opportunity he swiftly seized a sleeping man and effortlessly slit him open, bit his bone-enclosure apart, drank the blood from his veins, engulfed great slabs of meat; all at once he had devoured every part of that dead man, feet and hands.]

This description of Grendel’s eating habits is resemblant of the feeding behaviour of wolves, who also swallow chunks of meat whole and who are highly adept at crushing bones with their jaws,30 enabling them to consume every part of the carcass.31 Eurasian grey wolves prey primarily on deer,32 a species with which the Danes are associated. In the climax of his depiction of the Grendelkin’s home, Hrothgar describes a deer which, caught between the mere and a hunting party, chooses to take its chances with the latter on land, rather than risking its life in the water. In this passage Hrothgar uses the word heorot ‘hart’ (lines 1368–72) to name the deer, in ‘the only occurrence of [this term] as a common noun in Beowulf’.33 Echoing the name of the Danish hall, the description of this animal as a heorot suggests that ‘Hrothgar knows all 30 28 29

33 31 32

Parks, p. 6. Mech, Smith, and MacNulty, pp. 5–6 and 74 respectively. Rolf O. Peterson and Paolo Ciucci, ‘The Wolf as a Carnivore’, in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, ed. by Mech and Boitani, pp. 104–30 (pp. 116 and 114 respectively). Grendel’s name, which may be derived from the verb grindan, could refer to ‘the grinding of bones’; Skeat, ‘Signification’, pp. 121–2. Peterson and Ciucci, p. 124. See ibid., pp. 107–9. Richard Butts, ‘The Analogical Mere: Landscape and Terror in Beowulf’, ES, 68 (1987), 113–21 (p. 117).

162

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf too well’ that people, such as those who live at Heorot, ‘can be food for monsters’.34 While brown bears also hunt deer their diet comprises much more vegetable matter than wild mammalian prey,35 and with both this species and lynx extinct by the early medieval period, the only predators of deer left in early medieval England were wolves and humans (and the latter’s hounds), the two groups between which this deer may be caught. Wolves also feature much more prominently in the religion, culture, and literature of early medieval England than do bears.36 As such, it is possible to draw a far greater number of comparisons between the Grendelkin and wolves depicted elsewhere, which arguably offer more suggestive parallels to the monsters than any of the far scarcer depictions of bears. For example, while Skeat compares the fact that Grendel ‘prowl[s] round the great hall every night’ with a passage from Horace’s Epodes37 – nec vespertinus circumgemit ursus ovile ‘in the evening no bear comes growling around the sheepfold’38 – there exist several biblical phrases in which wolves are associated with the evening, in Jeremiah 5.6 (lupus ad vesperam ‘wolf in the evening’), Habakkuk 1.8 (lupis vespertinis ‘evening wolves’), and Zephaniah 3.3 (lupi vespere ‘evening wolves’), which are far more likely to have been known in early medieval England than the Epodes.39 Skeat also argues that Grendel’s grap ‘grasp’ (line 836) is comparable to the bear’s ‘wonderful paw, with its shaggy covering and its strong claws’.40 Yet these hands, so overpoweringly strong that Grendel’s victims stand no chance of survival from the moment he seizes them, might also 36 34 35



37 38



39



40

Parks, p. 8. Swenson et al., p. 148. In particular, bears are not a common feature of Old English poetry, unlike wolves; Gale R. Owen-Crocker, ‘Beast Men: Eofer and Wulf and the Mythic Significance of Names in Beowulf’, in Myth in Early Northwest Europe, ed. by Stephen O. Glosecki, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 21 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007), pp. 257–80 (p. 271). That said, they do feature in the gnomic Maxims II, in which it is stated that Bera sceal on hæðe, / eald and egesfull ‘The bear must be on the heath, old and awful’ (lines 29–30). Why the bear sceal ‘must’ be on hæðe ‘on the heath’ is something of a mystery, since they were not found on any heaths in early medieval England, although the use of the term eald ‘old’ in this context may be significant. ‘Signification’, p. 122. Epodes, in Horace: ‘Odes’ and ‘Epodes’, ed. and trans. by Niall Rudd, Loeb Classical Library, 33 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 270– 319 (line 51). The Epodes is found in only two manuscripts written in early medieval England, both of which date to the eleventh or twelfth century; see Gneuss and Lapidge nos 179.5 and 681.5. ‘Signification’, p. 125.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts be compared to the feet of the wolves described by Isidore in his Etymologiae. These wolves are so powerful that quidquid pede presserit non vivit ‘whatever they tread on with their paws does not live’,41 perhaps a reference to the fact that wolves use their feet to hold down their prey while they tear the flesh from it; a prey animal in this position certainly would not live after being ‘trod on’ in this manner. On the other hand, the poet’s preoccupation with Grendel’s hands may also be explained by way of the analogous passage from Blickling XVI discussed in chapter one, in which fynd þara on nicra onlicnesse ‘demons in the likeness of water-monsters’ grasp at sinners descending into the hell-mouth swa swa grædig wulf ‘just as would a greedy wolf’.42 Indeed, Grendel’s ‘grasping’ of both Hondscio and Beowulf foreshadow the scene in which his mother, the brimwylf ‘sea-wolf’ (lines 1506 and 1599), gripþ ‘grasps’ (line 1501) Beowulf as he descends into the mere, the monster almost identically mirroring the actions of Blickling XVI’s wolf-like demons. Yet although the Grendelkin are clearly affiliated with the (lupine) devil of the New Testament and his demons,43 wolves and dogs are also sometimes associated with the underworld in the Norse tradition; two dogs, Geri and Gífr, are mentioned in the Fjǫlsvinnsmál in the context of ‘a descensus ad inferos [“descent to hell”]’, and Odin, the god of death, is often accompanied by two wolves named Freki and Geri.44 Such canids appear to be Norse variants of the pan-European figure of the hellhound, a motif that might be the product of ‘the role of dogs as devourers of corpses, noted so often in the literature of the various Indo-European peoples, which naturally gave them strong funerary associations’.45 Geri, Gífr, and Freki’s names all ‘share a basic meaning’ of ‘greedy’, and the former is thought to derive from the Proto-Indo-European root *gher, a term which was ‘used to express rough, hoarse noises of all sorts, but most particularly animal cries’, and from which ‘are built numerous verbs for Isidore, Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, XII.ii.23, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. 42 Blickling Homily XVII, ed. and trans. by Morris, p. 211. 43 See pp. 49–50 above. 44 Bruce Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 97–9. Lincoln also mentions Garmr, ‘the monstrous, ravening dog bound in front of the peak of Hel’, in this list of underworld-dwelling canids; ibid., p. 97. However, as Orchard notes, the cave called Gnipahellir which Garmr inhabits according to the Eddic Vǫluspá (sts 44 and 49 in Neckel and 43 and 46 in Larrington) is not explicitly associated with Hel, but has been supposed to be ‘situated at [its] entrance’ because of ‘the association of Garm and […] Cerberus’, the three-headed dog who guards the entrance to the Underworld according to Graeco-Roman mythology; Cassell Dictionary, s.v. Gnipahellir, p. 58. 45 Lincoln, pp. 96 and 100 respectively. 41

164

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf […] the growling or howling of dogs and wolves’.46 Grendel’s name might be derived from the same root,47 and while it would be unwise to overstate the potential implications of this possibility, it may be suggestive that, like the Norse wolves and dogs, one of whose names may be related to theirs, the Grendelkin are greedy, corpse-consuming guardians of a mere that is analogous to hell.48 Although dogs may have been depicted as guardians of the underworld because of this species’s predilection for exhuming and consuming corpses, in Old English literature it is the dog’s undomesticated counterpart who is more frequently depicted eating human remains. Most commonly, these man-eating wolves are found as part of the Beast of Battle topos in which, along with eagles and ravens, they hungrily await corpses to feast upon in pre-battle sequences which ‘evoke the grim expectation of slaughter’.49 Grendel’s journey to Heorot mirrors these scenes as, like the Beasts of Battle, the monster approaches Heorot with the same anticipation of a good meal and is filled with joy when his hopes are realised (lines 710–34). The wolf’s traditional role as a corpseeater may also have informed the description of the hills surrounding the Grendel-mere as wulfhleoþu ‘wolf-slopes’ (line 1358). While the appearance of lupine demons clinging to the cliffs of the hell-mouth in Blickling XVI could explain this term, it might also be indebted to a ‘traditional association of wolves and precipices’ in early medieval Scandinavia.50 This association may itself be a product of the fact that burial mounds were ‘often located on top of headlands or cliffs’, as well as the ‘custom […] of casting bodies down from’ promontories, a practice which was ‘common […] in the Scandinavian countries until very recent times’ and often mentioned in Norse sagas, and which likely attracted wolves to the resultant gory scenes.51 Given the wolf’s purported penchant for digging up and consuming human corpses, the existence of such customs and of cliff-top burial mounds suggests that ‘the association of

48 46 47



49



50 51

Ibid., pp. 99–100. Ibid., p. 100. This is not to say that the poet conceived the name ‘Grendel’ for their monster due to etymological knowledge, but that the Grendelkin could belong to an Indo-European tradition of hell-guarding and corpse-consuming dogs and wolves. Judith Jesch, ‘Eagles, Ravens and Wolves: Beasts of Battle, Symbols of Victory and Death’, in The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. by Judith Jesch (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), pp. 251–80 (p. 254). See, for example, Exodus (lines 162–7), and Judith (lines 205–12). Norman E. Eliason, ‘Wulfhlið (Beowulf, l. 1358)’, JEGP, 34 (1935), 20–3 (p. 20). Ibid., p. 21.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts wolves’ with such places ‘would not be strange’.52 Indeed, Gustave Otto Arlt has suggested that the custom of throwing bodies from cliffs and the potential association of wolves with such areas may explain the existence of the term frekasteinn ‘wolf-stone’, which appears several times in the Poetic Edda in reference to ‘place[s] where dead bodies, both human and animal, may be found’ and where, in one instance, these remains are scavenged upon by the wolf’s fellow Beast of Battle, the raven (Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, st. 44).53 Hence, it is possible that the similar term wulfhleoþu ‘wolf-slopes’ ‘in the poet’s mind and in the minds of his auditors’ might ‘have conjured up a picture of a cliff where wolves lurked, feeding upon […] carcasses’.54 Perhaps the man-eating Grendelkin who carry their spoils back to the mere are therefore ‘the wolves for whom the [“wolf-slopes”] are called’.55 Reminiscent of the fen-fastened landscape of Wulf, the dygel lond ‘hidden land’ (line 1357) in which the wulfhleoþu ‘wolf-slopes’ are found is also fenhopu ‘fen-enclosed’ (line 764). Though this is certainly an appropriate habitat for the monsters given that Grendel is termed a þyrs ‘demon’, ‘monster’ or ‘giant’ (line 426), a creature who sceal on fenne gewunian ‘must abide in the fen’ according to Maxims II (line 43), it is possible that the same association between wolves and fens that may have informed the landscape of Wulf could also lie behind the fenland setting of the Grendelkin’s mere. Indeed, as seen above there exist several lexical parallels between the descriptions of the fen-fastened landscapes of Beowulf and Wulf,56 the lupine inhabitants of which all ‘possess[] […] a hybridized human-animal nature that mimics the tumultuous land/water dynamic of [their] native fen-dwelling’.57 Like the fenland surrounding the Grendel-mere, according to local folklore the fens of East Anglia (where, Sam Newton argues in his Origins of ‘Beowulf’ and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia, Beowulf was composed) are likewise haunted by a canid-like monster: the enormous spectral dog named ‘Black Shuck’.58 Although the majority of stories of this creature post-date the Reformation,59 black dogs with large eyes appear as part of

52 53

56 57 58 54 55



59

Eliason, ‘Wulfhlið’, p. 21. ‘Two Old Norse Interpretations’, Scandinavian Studies and Notes, 11 (1931), 173–9 (pp. 173–5). Eliason, ‘Wulfhlið’, pp. 22–3. Wiersma, pp. 49–50. See pp. 105–6 above. Noetzel, p. 105. See p. 107 above. Theo Brown, ‘The Black Dog’, Folklore, 69 (1958), 175–92 (p. 176). While this is one of the locales where legends of Black Shuck are most prevalent, stories of this animal and other ‘species’ of spectral black dogs (ibid.) are found throughout much of Britain; see Brown, p. 177. Ibid., p. 192.

166

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf a spectral hunting party described in an entry for the year 1127 in the E-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was copied in Peterborough.60 In Reginald of Durham’s twelfth-century Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti, the sudden appearance of an enormous black dog is also recorded,61 although Bill Griffiths counts this as belonging to the Yorkshire ‘Pad-Foot’ ‘manifestation’ of Black Shuck, who is found in various guises in local folklore throughout much of the north and east of England.62 Though it is not clear whether black dog legends – and especially those of Black Shuck – extend as far back in time as the early medieval period, there are numerous points of comparison between Grendel and this spectral hound. Most notable is that Grendel is termed a scucca ‘demon’ (line 939), the term from which ‘Shuck’ derives.63 Like the Beowulfian monster, moreover, this legendary dog is a ‘partly chthonic entity’,64 with ‘some East Anglian sightings attribut[ing] a humanoid form to the creature, as does Hroðgar of Grendel’.65 Black Shuck also possesses ‘shining eyes’, as does Grendel (lines 726–7) and, like Beowulf’s monster, this folkloric dog is ‘associated with the Devil and with death’, and in East Anglia he lives ‘in and around fens and marshlands, whence he emerges, generally only at night, to walk alone, haunting specific places’.66 Finally, a tale recorded in an early twentieth-century publication details the case of a man who ‘remained speechless and paralytic to the end of his days’ after confronting a spectral black dog in Buckinghamshire,67 echoing the way in which Grendel leaves the Danes speechless after his attacks on Heorot.68 ‘Fen’ also forms the prefix of the name of the legendary Norse wolf Fenrir,69 the story of whose binding has been compared to Beowulf’s fight with Grendel. According to this story, the gods (Æsir) had decided to procure a chain with which to secure the wolf, fearful of his growing strength, but: For this passage, see The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition. Volume 7: MS E, ed. by Susan Irvine (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004), p. 129. 61 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti virtutibus quae novellis patratae sunt temporibus, Surtees Society, 1 (London: Nichols and Son, 1835), pp. 32–3. 62 Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic, rev. edn (Ely: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2003), pp. 53–4. See also Brown, ‘Black Dog’, p. 176. 63 Newton, pp. 143–4. 64 Brown, ‘Black Dog’, p. 189. 65 Newton, p. 144. 66 Ibid. 67 Edwin Sidney Hartland, English Fairy and Other Folk Tales (London: Scott, 1906), p. 236. Brown also describes the case of a person in the Isle of Man who ‘lost his speech’ after encountering a black dog, while another man from Cornwall ‘who appeared to his wife as a spotted dog allowed her to choose whether she would lose sight or hearing’; ‘Black Dog’, p. 187. 68 See the section ‘Beowulf and the lupus in fabula’ below. 69 See p. 105 above.

60

167

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts er Æsir lokkuðu Fenrisúlf til þess at leggja fjǫturinn á hann, Gleipni, þá trúði hann þeim eigi at þeir mundu leysa hann fyrr en þeir lǫgðu honum at veði hǫnd Týrs í munn úlfsins. En þá er Æsir vildu eigi leysa hann þá beit hann hǫndina af þar er nú heitir úlfliðr.70 [when the Æsir were luring Fenriswolf so as to get the fetter Gleipnir on him, he did not trust them that they would let him go until they placed Tyr’s hand in the wolf’s mouth as a pledge. And when the Æsir refused to let him go then he bit off the hand at the place that is now called the wolf-joint (wrist).]71

John M. Hill argues that the fight between Grendel and Beowulf ‘articulates in its plot nearly exactly the binding of Fenris Wolf’, with Hondscio (Grendel’s first victim), whose name means ‘“hand-shoe” or glove’, serving as the ‘hand pledge’ equivalent to Tyr’s sacrifice.72 This ‘hand pledge’ leads to ‘Grendel becom[ing] sorely constrained’ in ‘baleful bonds ([lines] 970–77) where, Beowulf adds, he will remain until the great Day when the bright, resplendent Measurer will judge him’,73 just as Fenrir is fated to be bound in chains until Ragnarǫk. Although Tyr ‘may have died out of Anglo-Saxon mind and observance in the seventh century’, Hill argues that the god may have experienced ‘a rebirth of sorts’ following the Danish invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries.74 Indeed, a panel of the tenth-century Gosforth Cross might depict Tyr’s binding of Fenrir, while a ‘relief scene on a hogback from Sockburn’ which dates from the late ninth to early tenth centuries ‘depicts the story of Týr losing his hand to Fenrir’.75 Although this evidence depends upon an interpretation which places the composition of Beowulf after the eighth or ninth centuries, the mythical Fenrir and the tale of his binding by Tyr do offer suggestive parallels to Grendel and his fight with Beowulf nonetheless. While it is unlikely that all of the sources discussed above will have contributed to the Beowulf-poet’s portrayal of his monsters, and nor is it possible to determine which, if any, were known to them, the numerous

70



71



72

75 73 74

Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and ‘Gylfaginning’, ed. by Anthony Faulkes, 2nd edn (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, 2005), p. 25. Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, in Edda, trans. by Anthony Faulkes (London: Dent, 1987), pp. 7–58 (p. 25). This episode is also referenced in the Eddic Lokasenna, sts 38–9. ‘The Sacrificial Synecdoche of Hands, Heads, and Arms in Anglo-Saxon Heroic Society’, in Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Benjamin C. Withers and Jonathan Wilcox, Medieval European Studies, 3 (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2003), pp. 116–37 (pp. 124–5). Ibid., pp. 125 and 130 respectively. Ibid., p. 119 n.5. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 159.

168

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf comparisons that may be drawn between the Grendelkin and the wolf(ish creatures) from a range of sources, from Norse myth to English homiletic and folkloric material, do suggest that the Beowulf-poet could have been influenced by a wide variety of wolf lore. Likewise, the numerous comparisons that may be drawn between the Grendelkin’s actions and the behaviour of real-world wolves may suggest that the poet was not only well-versed in wolf lore, but that they may also have had an interest in the ethology of these animals.

The Multifaceted Identities of the Monsters: Wolfen at the Centre Although the focus of the foregoing pages has been the Grendelkin’s affinities to real-world and literary wolves, it is not the case that ‘a fixed essence must be sought for Grendel in order to explain his being’,76 nor for his mother. As with the characters of Wulf, attempting ‘to fix [them] into one category or the other would be to deny one of the poem’s most essential acts’;77 they are mearcstapan ‘border-walkers’ (line 1348) with unfixed identities, creatures suspended between animal, human, and demonic spirit. That said, however, wolfishness is a trait which lends itself to both outlawed human and evil spirits alike and, in a sense, is therefore a unifying facet which sits at the intersection of each of the Grendelkin’s identities.78 Considering these weargas as ‘wolves’ in a triadic sense – as wolves as beasts; as outlawed, wolf-like criminals; and as ‘accursed’, lupine demons – helps to explain the mutable identities of these monsters by providing a ‘logical unity’ to their characters,79 insofar as this interpretation allows for the very lack of unity upon which the poem insists.80 Indeed, entities of multifarious lupine character are found elsewhere in the corpus. As seen above, the Grendelkin may be compared to several beings whose identities are suspended between human and wolf,

76

79 80 77 78

Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, ‘Beowulf, Lines 702b–836: Transformations and the Limits of the Human’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 23 (1981), 484–94 (p. 486). Parks, p. 10. See pp. 47–52 above. Ruud, p. 7. Within Beowulf itself (lines 3010–27) wolves and exile are associated when, after Beowulf’s death, ‘the Geats must begin to lead a joyless’ – and silent – ‘life of exile, presided over by the beasts of battle, which is not unlike that of Grendel at the beginning of the poem’ (S. L. Dragland, ‘Monster-Man in Beowulf’, Neophilologus, 61 (1977), 606–18 (p. 612)), nor that of the Danes whom the wolfish monster left exiled and silent as he ‘plundered’ the corpses (reafode, line 3027) of his victims.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts such as the warriors of Genesis A and Exodus who are termed heoruwulfas ‘sword-wolves’ and herewulfas ‘battle-wolves’ (lines 2015 and 181 respectively), compounds which echo a term used of Grendel: heorowearh ‘savage accursed being’ (line 1267).81 Andreas’s Mermedonians, meanwhile, to whom the Grendelkin are comparable given that both groups are criminals outcast from both God and humankind, are termed wælwulfas ‘slaughter-wolves’ (line 149). This noun is also used of the invading Vikings in The Battle of Maldon,82 a textual representation of the ‘amorphous Danish army’ which ‘swept at will through every corner of England in the early years of the eleventh century’ destroying all in their path, whom Grendel mirrors in his characterisation as ‘an unidentified and formless enemy […] incomprehensible in nature, who had possession of and ranged over large expanses of land’.83 Maldon’s description of the Vikings as wælwulfas ‘slaughter-wolves’ might be an allusion to the Norse ulfheðnar,84 a lupine variant of the berserker.85 The berserker and ulfheðnar were warriors who wore bearand wolf-skins respectively in order to ‘acquire the attributes of [these] animals’, ‘run[ning] wild in battle, becom[ing] crazed, […] roar[ing] or howl[ing]’, and achieving a war-frenzy such that ‘no weapons [could] harm them’.86 The Grendelkin share a number of these traits:87 they are humanoid creatures with animalistic characteristics who are immune to swords (lines 798–805 and 1518–28) and possessed of great strength (lines 721–2 and 1541–2). Grendel in particular exhibits a berserker- and ulfheðnar-like rage (he is (ge)bolgen ‘swollen with anger’, line 723, and yrremod ‘angryminded’, line 726), and he howls during his battle with Beowulf (lines 83 81 82



84 85



86 87

See p. 48 above. See p. 27 above. Helen Damico, ‘Beowulf’ and the Grendel-Kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-century England, Medieval European Studies, 16 (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2015), p. 119. Leonard Neidorf argues that ‘the Viking invasions [during the reign of Æthelred the Unready, 978–1016] could have provided an impetus for a scriptorium to produce a poem’ such as Beowulf; ‘VII Æthelred and the Genesis of the Beowulf Manuscript’, Philological Quarterly, 89 (2010), 119–39 (p. 119). Britt, p. 138. The ‘earliest historical account of berserks’ and ulfheðnar is found in the Hrafnsmál of ninth-century Norwegian skald Þórbjǫrn Hornklofi; Jenny Wade, ‘Going Berserk: Battle Trance and Ecstatic Holy Warriors in the European War Magic Tradition’, International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 35 (2016), 21–38 (p. 25). Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir, p. 281. This is briefly suggested by E. D. Laborde, who notes that ‘Grendel in the presence of his foe is seized with a blind fit of courage and rage, like a berserker or a wild beast’; ‘Grendel’s Glove and His Immunity from Weapons’, Modern Language Review, 18 (1923), 202–4 (p. 202).

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The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf 782–8).88 The ulfheðnar are themselves comparable to Wulfstan’s werewulf ‘man-wolf’, as the adjective describing this creature, wodfræca ‘ravening’, can be taken as ‘a weak n-declension noun’ meaning ‘mad warrior’.89 The Grendelkin are also comparable to the werewulf ‘man-wolf’, therefore, both as ulfheðnar-like ‘mad warriors’ themselves and as human-like creatures aligned with the devil, since Wulfstan’s wulf is representative of both Satan cloaked in humanoid disguise as well as his human agents.90 Another half-human, half-canid monster which features in the Beowulf manuscript itself (British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. xv) might offer especially suggestive parallels to the Grendelkin. This creature, the Passion of St Christopher’s eponymous saint, is ‘a reformed cannibal, having belonged to the race of cynocephali, or dog-headed men, before his conversion’.91 Although only a fragment of Christopher’s Passio appears in the Beowulf manuscript,92 ‘the representation of [him] as a cynocephalus is well attested in medieval literature and iconography’, as, for example, in the Old English Martyrology:93 Cristofores […] com on Decies dagum þæs caseres on ða ceastre þe Samo is nemned, of þære þeode þær men habbað hunda heafod, ond of þære eorðan on ðære æton men hi selfe. He hæfde hundes heafod, ond his loccas wæron ofer gemet side, ond his eagan scinon swa leohte swa morgensteorra, ond his teþ wæron swa scearpe swa eofores tuxas. He wæs Gode geleaffull on his heortan, ac he ne mihte sprecan swa mon.94



88

91 89 90



92



93 94

According to the Grágás laws, a person who entered berserks gang ‘a berserk’s frenzy’ was to be outlawed; see Grágás, ed. by Finsen, i, 23, and Grágás, trans. by Dennis, Foote and Perkins, i, p. 39. Higley, ‘Werewolf’, p. 362. See also Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 175. See pp. 52–3 above. Heather Blurton, Cannibalism in High Medieval English Literature (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 39. Christopher’s dog-headedness goes unmentioned in this Passio, though this ‘is scarcely surprising, since the fact is usually mentioned at the beginning of parallel accounts’ and the beginning of the text in the Beowulf manuscript is missing; Orchard, Pride, p. 14. In what does survive of this account, however, Christopher ‘is described as […] “the worst of wild beasts” (wyrresta wilddeor), and there seems little doubt that the same dog-headed saint is depicted’ here as in other accounts of the saint from early medieval England; ibid., quoting and translating from the Life of St. Christopher, in Three Old English Prose Texts in MS. Cotton Vitellius A xv, ed. by Stanley Rypins, EETS OS, 161 (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), pp. 68–76 (p. 70). Blurton, p. 39. The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary, ed. and trans. by Christine Rauer, Anglo-Saxon Texts, 10 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2013), p. 90. This passage, in a different edition, is cited by Blurton, p. 39.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts [Christopher came to the city that is named Samos in the time of the emperor Decius, from that nation where people have the heads of the dog, from that land where men eat one another. He had the head of a dog, his hair was of incredible length, his eyes shone as bright as the Morning Star, and his teeth were as sharp as the tusks of the boar. In his heart he was faithful to God, but he was unable to speak like a human.]

This portrait of Christopher seems ‘equally descriptive of Grendel’ despite the fact that the latter ‘is not described as having a dog’s head’: Grendel’s hair, like Christopher’s, ‘must be quite thick and shaggy, as Beowulf uses it to carry his head’ (lines 1647–8); ‘his eyes are described as shining’ (lines 726–7); and ‘that Grendel’s teeth are sharp goes without saying’.95 Like Grendel Christopher is also gigantic, being twelf fæðma lang96 ‘twelve cubits tall’, and both are guilty of cannibalism.97 The Cainite lineage of the Grendelkin may also contribute to their conflated identities, as in some exegetical texts Cain is ‘seen as having degenerated socially to the level of beast’, since by murdering Abel ‘he had previously acted on the moral level of the beast’.98 In his De Cain et Abel, for example, Ambrose describes how God ‘repulsed [Cain] from His countenance and, since he had violated his kin, He relegated him to a separate habitation in exile’ where ‘he was converted from human ways to the savagery of beasts’.99 Perhaps the outcast, sometime animal-like Cain might then be considered reminiscent of the wolfish criminal, bestial both in his actions against society and in the resultant outlawry, and whose lupine status could be passed down to his kin.100



95 96

99 97 98



100

Blurton, p. 40. See also Newton, p. 6. Life of Christopher, ed. by Rypins, p. 68. Blurton notes that cannibalism, gigantism and dog-headedness are ‘characteristics [which] tend to accrue to the same monsters’; Cannibalism, pp. 42–3. See p. 49 n.172 above. Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 6. Ibid., translating from De Cain et Abel, in Sancti Ambrosii, Mediolanensis Episcopi opera omnia, ed. by J. P. Migne, PL, 14–17, 4 vols (Paris: Migne, 1845), i, cols 315–60 (col. 360). Since ‘Abel was the first shepherd in the Bible’ and he ‘offered a lamb to God’, he also ‘foreshadows Christ as the good shepherd’ and as ‘the Lamb of God’ (John Byron, Cain and Abel in Text and Tradition: Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the First Sibling Rivalry, Themes in Biblical Narrative: Jewish and Christian Traditions, 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 197), the enemy of the wolfish devil. As seen in chapter one, in the Icelandic Grágás law-code the child of an outlaw (vargr) is called a vargdropi (see Grágás, ed. by Finsen, i, 224, and Grágás, trans. by Dennis, Foote and Perkins, ii, p. 7), within whom, according to the Sigrdrífumál, there dwells a wolf (st. 35).

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The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf Indeed, in the Irish Reference Bible, an Insular collection of commentaries on the Bible dating to c. 800, cannibalistic werewolves are said to descend from Cain/Cham: Cam doctus filius Noe his artibus ante diluvium sciens diluvium delere totum mundum et recuperare post diluvium, et novit suum patrem iustum et sanctam noluisset has artes magicas intrare in arcam, scribsit vel sculpsit illas in lapides et post diluvium relegit illas et docuit filiis suis. Inde hucusque magice artes et male cantationes unde homines vertuntur in lupos et in iumenta et assinos et in aves, ut sunt multe fabule. Sicut legimus Circe que socios Ulixis motauit in bestias, et Arcades natantes stagnum convertuntur in lupos et cum similibus feris per deserta vivunt. Si vero carne humana non vescuntur iterum post viiii annis eodem stagno renatato reformantur in homines. Si vero hominem edat non revertit iterum in hominem.101 [Cham, the son of Noah, being learned in these arts, knowing that the whole world was to be destroyed in the Flood, and after the Flood to recover, knowing that his father was righteous and just and would not wish these magic arts to enter the ark, he inscribed or engraved them in stone and after the Flood he read them again and taught them to his sons. Then to this day there are magic arts and incantations whereby men are turned into wolves and into cattle and asses and into birds, and there are many tales. Just as we read of Circe who changed the companions of Ulysses into beasts, and of the Arcades, swimming across a lake, who are turned into wolves and dwell in the wastelands with similar wild animals. If they do not eat human flesh, after they have crossed the same lake nine years later they turn back into men, but if they eat people they do not change back.]102

Extracts of this text ‘found in a late Anglo-Saxon manuscript from Salisbury, Cathedral Library 115’ evidence that it circulated in early medieval England, as does the fact that ‘the influence of the work has been detected on several Old English texts’, including Beowulf.103 One of the parallels between Beowulf and the Irish Reference Bible is the conflation between Cain and Cham seen in each. In lines 106–7 of Beowulf, the manuscript reads him scyppen forscrifen hæfde / in Cames cynne ‘the creator had condemned him [Grendel] as Cam’s kin’, while at lines 1261–2,

101



102 103

J. E. Cross, ‘Towards the Identification of Old English Literary Ideas: Old Workings and New Seams’, in Sources of Anglo-Saxon Culture, ed. by Paul E. Szarmach and Virginia Darrow Oggins, Studies in Medieval Culture, 20 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986), pp. 77–101 (pp. 99–100). Orchard, Pride, p. 75. Ibid., p. 72.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Grendel’s Mother is described as having been outlawed siþðan Camp wearð / to ecgbanan angan breþer ‘since Cam became a sword-slayer to his only brother’. The ascription of this crime to Camp in the latter passage is likely a scribal error for Cain, or a later copyist’s alteration based on the fact that the name Cam appears at line 107 which was subsequently ‘corrupted […] into camp [“struggle” or “combat”]’.104 In the earlier line, however, cames ‘Cam’s’ has itself been altered to caines ‘Cain’s’,105 yet unlike the apparent mistake at line 1261, the original description of Grendel as Cames cynne ‘Cam’s kin’ in line 107 may not have been an error at all since, ‘in certain traditions, Cain was considered the progenitor of antediluvian monsters (gigantas) [‘giants’], whereas Cam was considered the progenitor of postdiluvian monsters (eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas) [‘ogres and elves and monsters’]’.106 This may suggest that the poet intentionally ascribed the creation of monstrous beings to both Cain and Cham, conflating the two so as to ‘link[] antediluvian and postdiluvian monsters and explain[] why God continues to feud with Grendel and his mother even after exterminating the gigantes [lines 1688–98]’.107 Similarly, in the above-quoted passage of the Reference Bible, at the phrase Cam doctus filius ‘the base text has Cain, but both the other manuscripts read C(h)am’,108 and indeed, throughout the Reference Bible ‘the deeds’ usually attributed to Cham ‘are distributed between’ Cham and his forefather, Cain, such that ‘in the oldest manuscript […] (s. viii–ix), there is a passage concerning the origins of monsters in which Cain enters Noah’s ark and Cam exits it’.109 As well as this concordance, the Reference Bible ‘supplies two major themes which […] are crucial to the description of Grendel and his kin, namely “cannibalism, and the ogres’ home in the wasteland”’.110 The Grendelkin’s mere also recalls the Arcadians’ lake, given that it is surrounded by wulfhleoþu ‘wolf-slopes’ (line 1358) and that its inhabitants ‘are described in lupine terms’.111 Not only this, but the Grendelkin share traits with the Arcadians themselves; while werewolves often retain their human thoughts despite being unable to speak post-metamorphosis,112 and their transformation is frequently described as a punishment for wolflike behaviour, the Grendelkin likewise exhibit reason, emotion, inner

104

107 108 105 106

111 112 109 110

Leonard Neidorf, ‘Cain, Cam, Jutes, Giants, and the Textual Criticism of Beowulf’, Studies in Philology, 112 (2015), 599–632 (pp. 606–7). Ibid., p. 601. Ibid., p. 610. Ibid., p. 611. Orchard, Pride, p. 74 n.70. See also Cross, ‘Old Workings and New Seams’, p. 82. Neidorf, ‘Cain’, p. 610. See Orchard, Pride, p. 73 for this passage. Orchard, Pride, p. 75, quoting Cross, ‘Old Workings and New Seams’, p. 82. Orchard, Pride, p. 75. See p. 86 above.

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The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf thoughts, and desires,113 but are unspeaking, wolf-like creatures who were ‘transformed’ from human to monster as a consequence of the crimes of their forefathers, Cain and Cham. In this Reference Bible passage, the lycanthropy of the Arcadians is dependent upon not only their cannibalism but also their traversing a lake. Wolves and water are also connected in Blickling XVI; the fynd ‘demons’ who snatch at the sinners swa swa grædig wulf ‘just as would a greedy wolf’ in the homily appear on nicra onlicnesse ‘in the likeness of water-monsters’.114 Hence, this suggests that the wolfishness of these monsters is also not incompatible with their characterisation as water-monsters; indeed, even in Beowulf itself Grendel’s Mother is twice termed a brimwylf ‘seawolf’ (lines 1506 and 1599). Water-dwelling animals could also be deemed so rapacious that they were comparable to wolves. In a passage from the early twelfth-century Liber Eliensis which ‘has relevance to the Beowulfian landscape’, for example, it is said that the water surrounding the isle of Ely is populated by ‘“great water wolves (by which [the author] means the voracious pike)”’.115 The pike was ‘probably the most sinister and aggressive fish habitually encountered by Anglo-Saxons, southern Scandinavians and Continental Germans’, thus explaining its comparison with the wolf;116 indeed, Isidore notes that this fish is termed lupus ‘wolf’ quod inproba voracitate alios persequantur ‘because they pursue other fish with cruel voracity’.117 In the Eddic Hymiskviða, moreover, the Midgard-serpent (the brother of Fenrir), is named a ‘sea-wolf’,118 while Fenrir’s name itself might be the product of a traditional association between wolves and fens,119 a landscape comprising both land and water. Several Old English place-names also feature the term ‘wulf in combination with words for water’, such as ‘Woolmer’ (wulf and mere), and Hough has argued that in toponyms describing watery areas which include wearg, this term should be interpreted as ‘wolf’.120 Recognising that the Grendelkin possess lupine facets, therefore, does not contradict nor negate the fact that their identities comprise a multiplicity of other components. Rather, the wolfish nature of the Grendelkin 115 113 114



116



117

120 118 119

See lines 86–137; 712–34; 1276–93 and 1546–7. Blickling Homily XVII, ed. and trans. by Morris, p. 211. Damico, p. 81, translating from Liber Eliensis, ed. by E. O. Blake (London: Royal Historical Society, 1962), p. 181. Tania M. Dickinson, ‘Symbols of Protection: The Significance of Animal-ornamented Shields in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, Medieval Archaeology, 49 (2005), 109–63 (p. 156). Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, XII.vi.5, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 260. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 156. See pp. 105–6 above. ‘OE wearg’, pp. 17–18. See pp. 42–3 n.143 above.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts works in concert with these other aspects of their characterisation, adding another strand to the unfixed natures of these monsters and contributing to the terror they invoke as ‘harbinger[s] of category crisis’,121 yet at the same time drawing their triadic identities as human, animal, and demon together, with wolfishness at the centre.

Beowulf: True to His Name Beowulf’s titular hero displays numerous similarities to and wolfish affinities with his enemies, the most immediately obvious being the suffix of his name. Generally, this term is taken to ‘represent not an actual wolf’ but, when combined with the prefix, as ‘“one who acts wolfishly towards something”’, here the beo ‘bee’;122 based on the bear’s well-known penchant for honey,123 the name is thus taken as ‘a sort of kenning’ meaning ‘bear’.124 Yet, as has been outlined by Christopher Abram, there are several significant objections to this interpretation. First, a ‘usage of “wolf” in a kenning’ in this manner ‘is found nowhere in either Old English or Old Norse’; second, neither bears nor bees are common features of kennings; and third, ‘Beowulf never turns into a bear; nor is he related to any bears; nor does he particularly resemble a bear’.125 In light of these facts, it is prudent to seek another explanation for this unusual combination of beo with wulf. As Abram suggests, the name might in fact be better explained by an ‘intertextual echo’ found within Beowulf itself (lines 874–915): a comparison drawn between the hero and Sigmund, a character from the Vǫlsunga saga who, like Beowulf, slays a dragon.126 Aside from his dragon-slaying ventures, in the saga Sigmund also contends with a werewolf, from which he escapes by applying honey to his mouth, in a scene which thus ‘collocates […] the bee [the maker of honey] with the wolf’.127 Although this specific episode of the saga is not mentioned in Beowulf, that the eponymous hero of the poem is compared to Sigmund, and that the werewolf episode from the saga was known in early medieval England (as is evidenced by its depiction upon an early

121

124 125 126 127 122 123

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 3–25 (p. 6). Abram, p. 393. See Skeat, ‘Signification’, p. 124. Abram, p. 391. Ibid., pp. 392–3. Ibid., p. 410. For more on this, see ibid., pp. 395–406. Ibid., p. 411. For this passage, see Vǫlsunga saga, ed. and trans. by Finch, pp. 7v–8r.

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The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf eleventh-century frieze found in Winchester’s Old Minster,128 and possibly on a tenth-century hogback from Heysham, Lancashire),129 this analogue might provide a more persuasive explanation for the moniker of Beowulf’s titular hero than the ‘wolf of the bees’ equals ‘bear’ argument.130 After escaping from the she-wolf, in a later part in the Vǫlsunga saga Sigmund metamorphoses into the very animal which he had previously defeated, becoming an outlaw in a moral decline metaphorised in his transformation into a werewolf.131 While Sigmund’s lycanthropy likewise goes unmentioned in Beowulf, that the poet understood this figure to be an outlaw may be implied by the fact that he is described as having undertaken wide siðas ‘wide-ranging journeys’ (line 877), a phrase ‘used twice elsewhere in the poetic corpus of evil outcasts’: Genesis A’s serpent (line 905) and the devil in Christ and Satan (line 188).132 Sigmund is also guilty of fæhðe ond fyrena ‘feuding and committing crimes’ (line 879), for the latter

128



129



130



131 132

North, ‘Signý Reconsidered’, p. 43. For more on this frieze, see Dominic Tweddle, Martin Biddle, and Birthe Kjolbye-Biddle, South-East England, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 314–22. See Thor Ewing, ‘Understanding the Heysham Hogback: A Tenth-century Sculpted Stone Monument and Its Context’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 152 (2003), 1–20 (pp. 8–9). Skeat uses this theory to bolster his contention that the Grendelkin are ursine rather than lupine: ‘if [Beowulf’s] fame had been gained by the slaughter of wolves, there would have been no point in naming him Bear’; ‘Signification’, pp. 124–5. However, this is moot if the episode from the Vǫlsunga saga is accepted as an analogue to Beowulf since, in this scenario, Grendel may be compared to the saga’s werewolf, with the tongue-wrenching of the werewolf by Sigmund analogous to the episode in which Beowulf tears off Grendel’s arm; Mark J. Lidman, ‘Wild Men and Werewolves: An Investigation of the Iconography of Lycanthropy’, Journal of Popular Culture, 10 (1976), 388–97 (p. 391). However, it has also been suggested that Beowulf’s name derives from the compound beaduwulf ‘battle-wolf’ (see p. 98 n.60 above), while Fajardo-Acosta has ‘propose[d] the form beo(rn)-wulf (“man-wolf” or “warrior-wolf”) as the relevant compound underlying the word “Beowulf”’, taking beorn as a term for a human warrior and thereby arguing that Beowulf ‘is not so much a berserker […] as an ulfheðinn’; Heroism, p. 14. This interpretation of the Beo- prefix as meaning ‘warrior’ is supported by Magennis’s observation that although ‘the poetic word beorn, “warrior, nobleman”, originally meant “bear”, and the word may have retained some metaphorical associations for Anglo-Saxon poets and their audiences[,] […] such associations were slight’, as ‘its application to unviolent figures such as Christ (The Dream of the Rood, line 42), a wise teacher (Vainglory, line 4) and St Guthlac’s servant, who is “elnes beloren” (Guthlac, line 1327) (“bereft of valour”), suggests that any metaphorical associations it may have had were extremely weak’; Appetites, p. 69. See p. 36 above. M. S. Griffith, ‘Some Difficulties in Beowulf, Lines 874–902: Sigemund Reconsidered’, ASE, 24 (1995), 11–41 (p. 20).

177

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts of which ‘an Anglo-Saxon audience may have thought that banishment was a likely consequence’.133 Indeed, this latter term, fyren ‘crime’, is used elsewhere in Beowulf to describe ‘the depredations of Grendel’ on seven occasions (lines 101, 137, 153, 164, 628, 750, and 811), and Grendel’s actions are described in the same way as Sigmund’s, with the phrases fæhðe ond fyrena ‘feud and crime’ (line 137) and fyrene ond fæhðe ‘committing crimes and feuding’ (line 153).134 Thus, while the description of Sigmund as a wreccena wide mærost (line 898) may be rendered as ‘the most famous of “wanderers”, “adventurers”, “fighting men”, “hero-adventurers”, or “heroes”’, or as ‘the more neutral “exiles”’, given this figure’s ambiguous status ‘the text can sustain a very different interpretation – “He was by far the most notorious of outcasts”’.135 In this case, Thomas D. Hill argues, this description might recall ‘those episodes in Vǫlsunga saga in which Sigmund and Sinfiolti live together in the forest, plundering and slaying innocent travellers’ while in the form of werewolves,136 perhaps suggesting that the Beowulf-poet understood Sigmund to be an outlaw and, in turn, that he may have been aware of Sigmund’s lycanthropy.137 Though he is unlike Sigmund in that he is not a criminal or outlaw, Beowulf does ‘seem[] to be in a kind of wandering exile throughout the poem’.138 Arriving in Denmark unexpected and without leafnesword ‘permission’ (line 245), despite Wulfgar’s proclamation that Wen ic þæt ge for wlenco, nalles for wræcsiðum ‘I think that you come because of pride, not because of exile’ (line 338) when he assesses Beowulf at Heorot’s door, the hall-guardian’s ‘verdict […] introduces a key anxiety that frames Beowulf’s ambition – that he could, in light of his pre-eminence and ambition, cross the behavioral threshold separating wreccan [“outcasts”] from other adventurers’.139 The comparison of the hero to Sigmund may 135 133 134



136



137



138



139

Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., pp. 20–1. Ibid., p. 39. As noted above (p. 21 n.9), wrecca is an ambiguous term that could denote both the sympathetic ‘exile’ or the unsympathetic ‘outlaw’; its meaning is dependent on context. Thomas D. Hill, ‘The Confession of Beowulf and the Structure of Volsunga Saga’, in The Vikings, ed. by R. T. Farrell (London: Phillimore, 1982), pp. 165– 79 (p. 172). Sigmund’s association with lycanthropy does appear to be older than the Vǫlsunga saga itself; see pp. 36–7 n.99 above. James David Mason, ‘Monsters with Human Voices: The Anthropomorphic Adversary of the Hero in Old English and Old Norse Literature’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Tennessee, 1976), p. 161. Scott Gwara, Heroic Identity in the World of ‘Beowulf’, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), p. 17. A similar fate befalls the titular character of the Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, an analogue to Beowulf assumed to have originated in ‘an independent oral source common to both’; Orchard, Pride, p. 167. In this text Grettir battles Glámr, a monster who, being

178

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf therefore articulate an anxiety that, in the wrong circumstances, Beowulf could likewise ‘pursu[e] the lone wolf’s path and becom[e] a wrecca […] imitating Sigemund’s ambiguously glorious deeds’ which are themselves framed as parallel to the crimes of Grendel.140 Indeed, that Sigmund both overcomes a werewolf and becomes one himself implies that the line between defeating a wolfish monster and transforming into one is all too easily crossed. Beowulf himself, in fact, teeters precariously upon this line during his fight with Grendel. In this scene, Grendel and Beowulf ‘share the same inner state’ (Yrre wæron begen ‘Both were enraged’, line 769),141 with ‘Beowulf’s humanity, as defined by his capacity for rational self-control’, all but ‘lost in the surge of his violent and destructive passions’.142 These ‘violent and destruction passions’, along with his ‘superhuman might’, his ‘formidable grasp’, and the fact that he ‘prefers to fight without a weapon’ (and armour) ‘single-handed, foe against foe’,143 might in fact suggest that Beowulf ‘took a berserk stance […] to meet the monster on its own terms’,144 matching Grendel’s ulfheðnar-like characteristics with his own so that he might defeat this lupine monster.145



140 141



142 143



144



145

mikill vexti ok undarligr í yfirbragði, gráeygr ok opineygr, ulfgrár á hárslit ‘huge in stature and remarkable in appearance, with staring grey eyes and a shock of wolf-grey hair’, and being hateful of music, is comparable to Grendel; Orchard, Pride, p. 153, quoting and translating from Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, Íslenzk fornrit, 7 (Reykjavik: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1936), p. 110. Grettir succeeds in killing Glámr, but not before the monster ‘curses [him] with a Cain-like fate: ill luck, criminality, outlawry, and a solitude haunted by Glám’s terrible eyes’; R. Mark Scowcroft, ‘The Irish Analogues to Beowulf’, Speculum, 74 (1999), 22–64 (p. 34). As a result, Grettir is subsequently termed and treated as a vargr; Orchard, Pride, p. 154, citing Grettis saga, ed. by Guðni Jónsson, p. 229. Abram, p. 412. Manish Sharma, ‘Metalepsis and Monstrosity: The Boundaries of Narrative Structure in Beowulf’, Studies in Philology, 102 (2005), 247–79 (p. 254). Fajardo-Acosta, p. 12. A. Margaret Arent, ‘The Heroic Pattern: Old Germanic Helmets, Beowulf, and Grettis saga’, in Old Norse Literature and Mythology: A Symposium, ed. by Edgar C. Polomé (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), pp. 130–99 (p. 151). Michael P. Speidel, ‘Berserks: A History of Indo-European “Mad Warriors”’, Journal of World History, 13 (2002), 253–90 (p. 270). For more on this, see Thomas Pettitt, ‘Beowulf: The Mark of the Beast and the Balance of Frenzy’, NM, 77 (1976), 526–35. See pp. 170–1 above. Given Beowulf’s similarities to the ulfheðnar he may, like Grendel, be compared with Wulfstan’s ravening werewulf ‘man-wolf’; see pp. 52–3 above. Indeed, as Fajardo-Acosta notes, ‘the concept of a beo(rn)-wulf (“man-wolf”)’ which may lie behind Beowulf’s name ‘is semantically equivalent to that of a werewolf (OE wer-wulf, “man-wolf”)’; Heroism, p. 19.

179

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Yet the fact that Beowulf mirrors Grendel’s fighting style and his lupine hunting tactics (like the monster, he ambushes his victim at night-time) suggests that he also fights with Grendel ‘like a conspecific adversary (that is, as a member of the same biological species)’;146 in other words, like a wolf defending his territory from another lupine contester. This is also suggested by the fact that both Beowulf and Grendel are termed heaþodeor (line 772), another animal-related hapax whose suffix, though meaning ‘fierce, formidable, bold’ in adjectival form, in nominal form means ‘animal’ or ‘beast’ and is used mostly of ‘undomesticated quadrupeds, esp[ecially] savage beasts or game’;147 heaþodeor can therefore be taken to mean both ‘the battle-fierce [ones]’ and ‘the battle-beasts’. Indeed, when both hero and monster become a ‘common enemy’ against the hall,148 they damage its interior despite the fact that ne wendon ær witan Scyldinga / þæt hit a mid gemete manna ænig / […] tobrecan meahte ‘none of the Scylding counsellors had ever imagined that it were possible for the power of any man to break the hall apart’ (lines 778–80), a sentence implying that the grappling fighters might not be human at all. As well as heaþodeor ‘battle-fierce [ones]’ or ‘battle-beasts’ (line 772), both hero and monster are paired in two other phrases (reþe renweardas ‘savage hall-guardians’, line 770 and graman ‘fierce enemies’, line 777), which serve to ‘blur the distinction between the two adversaries’.149 The association of Beowulf with Grendel in these joint descriptions is in turn compounded by the ‘management of perspective in the scene’, whereby at several points it is unclear whether hero or monster are acting or being acted upon; the lines he onfeng hraþe / inwitþancum ond wið earm gesæt ‘he swiftly seized him with malice, and pressed against the arm’ (lines 748–9) and fingras burston ‘fingers ruptured’ (line 760), which could refer to either character, create an ‘intentional [and] unresolvable’ ambiguity by which ‘hero and hostile one’ are ‘merg[ed]’.150 Beowulf’s ‘grasping’ (the same action as that committed by the weargas ‘accursed beings’ of Blickling XVI) thus becomes indistinguishable from Grendel’s own,151 and he tears Grendel’s banlocan ‘bone-enclosure’ apart (line 818) just as the monster had done to Hondscio (line 742).152 Likewise, just as Hondscio was doomed to 148 149 150 151 146 147



152

Parks, p. 2. DOE s.v. dēor adj. and dēor noun [accessed 4 May 2020]. O’Brien O’Keeffe, ‘Limits of the Human’, p. 490. Ibid., p. 488. Ibid., p. 489. Beowulf’s hand-grip also contains the strength of thirty men, the same number of thanes Grendel snatches from Heorot (lines 379–81 and 122–3 respectively); Orchard, Pride, p. 32. Megan Cavell, ‘Constructing the Monstrous Body in Beowulf’, ASE, 43 (2014), 155–81 (pp. 164–5).

180

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf die as soon as he was touched by Grendel’s overpoweringly strong grip, the monster knows that he has met his end as soon as he feels the strength of the hero’s hands (lines 748–54) which, like his own, call to mind the feet of Isidore’s wolves, which are so powerful that they presage death.153 This blurring of human and monster, however, articulates ‘the paradox of heroism in Beowulf’:154 the only way that the monster may be defeated is if the hero imitates his adversary’s actions, becoming a mearcstapa ‘border-walker’ (line 103) who crosses the boundaries between civilisation and the wilderness, ‘halls and monsters’ dens’.155 Beowulf must therefore balance precariously on a tightrope between the extremes of human and monster, becoming both and yet ‘neither a member of society nor a beast of the wilderness’, in much the same manner as the wolfen outlaw.156 Yet although he possesses many characteristics which could make him monstrous, Beowulf is set apart by the pursuits into which he channels his lupine strength and ferocity.157 Unlike the Grendelkin, this hero ‘does not kill people for plunder’, and his ‘deeds are socially purposeful’;158 likewise, while the monsters ‘enter Heorot uninvited and under the cover of darkness’, Beowulf and the Geats assimilate themselves into the Danish community despite being outsiders, arriving ‘clearly visible in plain daylight’, which ‘defuses the potentially hostile nature of their arrival’.159 Beowulf is also ‘never called a wrecca [“outcast”]’,160 nor a

Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, XII.ii.23, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. 154 Sharma, p. 264. 155 Sarah Lynn Higley, ‘Aldor on Ofre, or the Reluctant Hart: A Study of Liminality in Beowulf’, NM, 87 (1986), 342–53 (p. 346). 156 Ibid. 157 This is much like the fact that the distinction between the outlaw and the exiled ascetic is based in the difference between ‘bad liminality [and] good’, which is a ‘question [of] conduct’; DeAngelo, p. 159. Indeed, for John D. Niles, ‘where Beowulf and Grendel differ is in their disposition rather than their power, and in this respect they are like day and night. Grendel represents the pure perversion of will. He is the grinder, the destroyer, the devourer; he is the spirit of evil grown huge […] he seeks the death of all that is bright and beautiful. In the hero who opposes him we see represented the triumph of will over all the infirmities of timidity, cowardice, and greed that can undermine the character of the best of men. Beowulf too is a destroyer, but he destroys to preserve’; ‘Beowulf’: The Poem and Its Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 20–1. Likewise, as will be seen in the penultimate section of this chapter, Grendel attacks the community and steals their speech, while Beowulf protects them. 158 Griffith, ‘Sigemund’, pp. 25 and 40 respectively. 159 Fabienne L. Michelet, ‘Hospitality, Hostility, and Peacemaking in Beowulf’, Philological Quarterly, 94 (2015), 23–50 (pp. 27 and 30 respectively). 160 Griffith, ‘Sigemund’, p. 39.

153

181

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts wearg ‘criminal’,161 and is neither a mute animal nor a speechless outlaw ‘without opportunity of dialogue, forbidden “to exchange words”’,162 but a hero who consistently proves himself with words.163 Despite ‘leav[ing] the protective sphere of human society’, and ‘penetrat[ing] into the midst of nature’s power’,164 therefore, Beowulf always has a place in human society to which he may return. While the Grendelkin ‘offer[] a decidedly negative picture of liminality’, being ‘exaggerated picture[s] of the outlaw […] who ha[ve] lost the protection of society’, Beowulf has the power to ‘use his liminality to advantage’, in order to ‘mediate[] between the two worlds’ of wilderness-dwelling animal and human living in society.165 Unlike the wolfish outcast of Maxims I, who is killed by his lupine companions because he has no place among neither wolves nor humans,166 Beowulf is able to negotiate his two identities and survive. Most important, however, is that while the monsters are aligned with the devil, Beowulf is aligned with God. His wolfen side is ‘tamed’ by faith, like the wolf of St Edmund and St Christopher himself, whose bestial natures were transformed through God’s grace. As Ambrose notes: Beneficio Christi et lupus ipse mutatus est; Beniamin lupus rapax apostolus Paulus factus est, non iam insidiator ovilium Christi, sed Defensor et custos […] per hunc lupum factum est, ut simus tuti in medio luporum.167 [By Christ’s goodness even the wolf has been changed. A raging wolf of the tribe of Benjamin became the apostle Paul. No longer preying on Christ’s little lambs, he has become their defender and guardian. […] Through this wolf we have become safe in the midst of wolves.]168

Like the lupine Paul, who uses his wolfishness to protect those weaker than himself against the evil wolves of this world, Beowulf is a ‘wolf of God’ who uses his lupine qualities to protect Heorot against the wolfen Grendelkin.

However, based on the similarities of Beowulf to Bǫðvarr, a character from the c. fourteenth-century Norse poem Hrólfs saga kraka, Gregor Sarrazin argues that if the latter text served as a source of Beowulf, in the process of translation into Old English the suffix of Bǫðvarr’s name ‘might have been misperceived as -vargr, “wolf”, and translated as -wulf’; R. D. Fulk, ‘The Etymology and Significance of Beowulf’s Name’, Anglo-Saxon, 1 (2007), 109–36 (p. 121), citing Gregor Sarrazin, ‘Beowa und Böthvar’, Anglia, 9 (1886), 200–4. 162 Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 4. 163 See pp. 190–2 below. 164 Neville, Natural World, p. 129. 165 Higley, ‘Liminality’, pp. 346–7. 166 Neville, Natural World, p. 129. 167 Expositio Psalmi CXVIII, ed. by Petschenig, p. 117. 168 Ambrose on Psalm 118 (119), trans. by Ní Riain, p. 76. 161

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The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf Beowulf and the lupus in fabula Given his affinities to the wolves and to wolf-like humans of both reality and fiction, one might consider Grendel’s motivation for preying upon the Danes to be simply a desire to destroy in the name of a full stomach. Yet Grendel is not only a predator in need of a meal, but a thinking and feeling entity. The Danes at Heorot are not simply his prey, but the object of the monster’s retaliatory attacks against a community by which he is rejected. Grendel, and later, his mother, do not merely kill the Danes – a much kinder fate – but relegate them to a state of bestial and exilic silence, just as they are outlaws ‘without opportunity of dialogue, forbidden “to exchange words”’, and ‘beast[s] which lack[] the gift of speech’.169 Theirs are the attacks of the lupus in fabula. These attacks strike at the heart of the Danish society which, at the opening of the poem, is depicted as a prelapsarian ‘Edenic idyll’,170 quite literally so since ‘the creation of the hall and the scop’s song of creation which follows […] link the creative act of Hrothgar with the Creation itself’.171 Speech, therefore, is an integral and powerful part of the Danish community, for just as Creation was enacted by God’s spoken Word,172 Heorot is built according to a spoken command by Hrothgar (line 68). Once constructed, Hrothgar then ‘shaped’ (scop, line 78) a name for the hall, evoking God’s naming of the elements of the world.173 This is a king whose wordes geweald wide hæfde ‘word had far-reaching authority’ (line 79), for whom ‘language is a source of power’;174 he is able to create a society based in the binding power of ‘word-exchange’,175 just as Creation ‘involved the rational joining of things’, including ‘the gift of language, a rational joining of words into meaningful speech’.176 In this society, therefore, the scop ‘poet’ plays an integral role. Like Hrothgar, this figure is ‘one who binds together, a joiner of words, a weaver of verbal patterns’,

171 169 170



172 173



174



175 176

Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 4. Pinner, p. 42. David D. Day, ‘Hands across the Hall: The Legalities of Beowulf’s Fight with Grendel’, JEGP, 98 (1999), 313–24 (p. 321). As Jeffrey Jerome Cohen notes, the song ‘ends […] before the introduction of original sin’; Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages, Medieval Cultures, 17 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 25. See also p. 49 above. See John 1.1, and Genesis 1.3–29. See Genesis 1.3–6. This verb is also used of God’s acts of Creation; see BT s.v. scippan, p. 835. Seth Lerer, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), p. 174. Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 3. Ibid., p. 4.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts a ‘shaper’177 – the term scop may be related to the verb scippan,178 meaning ‘to shape, form’; ‘to create (of the act of the Deity)’179 – his song of Creation (lines 90–8) reflecting and re-enacting its subject, weaving both words and society together in an act of community-binding creation.180 Since his song tightens ‘the bond that join[s] men and sustain[s] communities’, the scop is the ‘antithesis’ of the outlaw, the figure ‘without opportunity of dialogue, forbidden “to exchange words,” and rendered speechless, a characteristic associating [him] with the beast which lacks the gift of speech’.181 Grendel, a creature whose exilic speechlessness is embodied in his bestial form and who is an outlaw from Heorot as a ‘symbol [of] cosmic and social order’,182 is the mute antithesis of Heorot’s scop. He is excluded from the scop’s song not only as an act and embodiment of community and fellowship but also as a celebration of Creation born of the Word since, while God lif […] gesceop ‘shaped life’ (line 97), the monster is earmsceapen / on weres wæstmum ‘shaped in misery in the form of a man’ (lines 1351–2),183 formed not by the Creator but by the crimes of his forefather, Cain.184 Carrying an aural reminder over the moors of what he does not and will never possess, Grendel is thus enraged and pained by this expression of the Word created by and manifested within Heorot (lines 86–90).185 Unable to be a part of the Danes’ community of words he thus turns instead to preying upon them, acting as a speech-stealing lupus in fabula by killing and ‘cannibaliz[ing]’ the Danes as ‘agents of speech’.186 179 180 181 177 178



182



183

186 184 185

Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 5 n.12. BT s.v. scippan, p. 835. Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 4. Ibid., pp. 4–5. This is seen in the punishment of Cain in the Old Saxon Genesis: forhuaton sculon thi hluttra liudi, thu ni scalt io furthur cuman te thines herron sprake, wehslean tharmid wordon thinon ‘good people shall curse thee; thou shalt not ever come to the assembly of thy lord, exchange words there’; ibid., p. 4, citing Die Genesisbruchstücke, in Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Bibeldichtung aus der Bibliotheca Palatina, ed. by Karl Zangemeister and Wilhelm Braune (Heidelberg: Koester, 1894), pp. 42–64 (lines 75–8), and Oliver F. Emerson, ‘Legends of Cain, Especially in Old and Middle English’, PMLA, 21 (1906), 831–929 (p. 863) respectively. James W. Earl, Thinking About ‘Beowulf’ (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), p. 120. Likewise, Grendel’s Mother is described as having the idese onlicnæs ‘likeness of a woman’ (line 1351), a phrase which ironically recalls yet subverts the creation of humankind, whom God geworhtne / æfter his onlicnesse ‘made after his likeness’ (Genesis B, lines 395–6). See pp. 47–8 above. Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 11. Michael R. Near, ‘Anticipating Alienation: Beowulf and the Intrusion of Literacy’, PMLA, 108 (1993), 320–32 (p. 325).

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The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf Ensuring their silence with his continuous occupation of the hall,187 Heorot itself becomes a mute personified being, nothing but silence issuing from its muþ ‘mouth’ (line 724). According to the lupus in fabula superstition, the wolf may steal his victim’s speech if he sees his victim before his victim sees him, a condition met in Beowulf since the Danes are oblivious to Grendel’s approach: sorge ne cuðon, / wonsceaft wera ‘they did not know sorrow, the unhappiness of men’ (lines 119–20). In allegorical interpretations of the superstition, meanwhile, the speech-stealing wolf is representative of the devil, who may steal the Word from his victims if they are unvigilant and spiritually unprepared for his attacks.188 That the Danes are spiritually unalert would indeed explain why they are depicted swefan æfter symble ‘sleeping after the feast’ (line 119) in the hall, the scene of the monster’s crimes, the very next night (lines 134–7), since this image later appears as a metaphor for death: gesecan sceal sawlberendra nyde genydde, niþða bearna, grundbuendra gearwe stowe, þær his lichoma legerbedde fæst swefeþ æfter symle.

(lines 1002–8)

[soul-bearers, the children of men, the earth-dwellers, must inevitably be compelled to seek the place prepared for them, the inescapable grave where his body sleeps after the feast.]

Perhaps the Danes were not merely literally ‘asleep’ but metaphorically and spiritually ‘dead’, with Grendel’s attacks thus paralleling the depredations of the wolf who exhumes a grave and consumes the flesh within. Indeed, the hall itself soon no longer embodies the Creation born of the Word but, abandoned by night, becomes a silent place akin to hell, the ‘dark, idle, and inarticulate underworld, the closed hoard’189 and rædlease hof ‘counsel-less hall’ (Genesis A, line 44)190 to which bodiless souls, such as



187



188 189



190

This motive would explain why Grendel comes to the hall every night despite only the intermittent promise of a meal during the twelve years since his first attacks (lines 144–9); although some of the Danes had attempted to slay the monster, and were themselves killed (and, presumably, eaten) for their efforts (lines 480–8), heold hyne syðþan / fyr ond fæstor se þæm feonde ætwand ‘whoever escaped from that fiend afterwards secured himself firmly, far away’ (lines 142–3). See pp. 60–2 above. Martin Stevens, ‘The Structure of Beowulf: From Gold-hoard to Word-hoard’, Modern Language Quarterly, 39 (1978), 219–38 (p. 221). Gwara, p. 216.

185

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts the victims of the corpse-consuming wolf who are unable to speak their case for salvation, must descend on Judgement Day. That this ‘sleep’ is spiritual is also suggested by Hrothgar’s description of a man in his ‘sermon’ whose weard swefeð, / sawele hyrde; bið se slæp to fæst ‘guardian, the shepherd of the soul, sleeps; that sleep is too deep’ (lines 1741–2). Ironically, Hrothgar himself corresponds to this sawele hyrde ‘shepherd of the soul’ (line 1742), having been given authority over his people by God (line 72) as the folces hyrde ‘shepherd of his people’ (line 610), like King Edmund in the passiones. Yet while Edmund acts as a true shepherd, caring for his subjects’ spiritual wellbeing,191 Hrothgar offers the Danes only the earthly pleasures of ‘feasting, celebrating, and drinking’.192 Thus, in the absence of a true hyrde ‘shepherd’, a ‘spiritual guardian of his people’193 who represents the wuldres hyrde ‘shepherd of glory’ (line 931), the Danes grow too comfortable in their material delights (sorge ne cuðon, / wonsceaft wera ‘they did not know sorrow, the unhappiness of men’, lines 119–20), like the person described in Hrothgar’s sermon who Wuna(ð) […] on wiste ‘Lives in plenitude’, whom no […] wiht dweleð ‘nothing hinders’ (line 1735) and for whom him eal worold / wendeð on willan; he þæt wyrse ne con ‘all the world bends to his will, so that he does not know displeasure’ (lines 1738–9). Like this man, whom innan oferhygda dæl / weaxe(ð) ond wridað ‘pride waxes and takes root deep within’ (lines 1740–1), the Danes grow proud, considering themselves and their hall immune to destruction (lines 778–80). They are lulled into complacency because of the failings of their hyrde ‘shepherd’, Hrothgar, and the ‘shepherds of their souls’ thus ‘sleep’, leaving them vulnerable to the speech-stealing attacks of the wolfish devil. Sure enough, the Danes fall prey to the attacks of a(n) wergan gast ‘accursed spirit’, just like the man in the sermon (lines 133 and 1747).194 Abandoning the hall to Grendel, the Danes suffer nydwracu ‘enforced exile’ (line 193). This ‘exile’, however, which recalls the wræclastas ‘exilepaths’ (line 1352) træd ‘trod’ by Grendel, is not the same as that suffered by the sympathetic exiles of the Old English elegies, nor are the Danes victims of wyrd ‘fate’ as Hrothgar later claims (line 477). Rather, it is a result of their own failings that they are rendered outcasts from the hall and from God, whose anger Grendel bears (Godes yrre bær, line 711)195 and

191 192

195 193 194

See pp. 131–2 above. Harry Berger, Jr and H. Marshall Leicester, Jr, ‘Social Structure as Doom: The Limits of Heroism in Beowulf’, in Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, ed. by Burlin and Irving, pp. 37–79 (p. 56). Benskin, p. 16. Mason, p. 155. ‘There are three possible interpretations of this deceptively simple statement, and it is likely that the poet wished all three to be in the minds of his audience simultaneously: (1) God is angry at Grendel; (2) Grendel bears God’s anger

186

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf who, as Hrothgar knows, eaþe mæg / þone dolscaðan dæda getwæfan ‘can easily put a stop to the deeds of this senseless criminal’ (lines 478–9), but apparently chooses not to do so. Moreover, since ‘the hall […] is the center and the light’ (lixte se leoma ofer landa fela ‘the light [from within it] shone far over the lands’, line 311), representative of the light of God’s Creation, by abandoning Heorot the Danes in fact ‘move closer to the outer dark where Grendel walks’,196 further from God and deeper into the obscurity of ignorance and sin. Hrothgar fails as folces hyrde ‘the shepherd of his people’ for a second time, allowing them to be ‘shepherded’ into darkness by Grendel, who assumes a role as the perverse antithesis to Hrothgar, as fyrena hyrde ‘the shepherd of crimes’ (line 750). Like the hireling of John 10,197 the Danish king flees into the darkness when his flock is scattered by a ‘wolf’. According to Ambrose, the devil and his agents can employ versutae disputationis venena ‘the venom of false and specious discussions’ to steal their victim’s speech.198 Again, this is mirrored in the events Hrothgar depicts in his sermon, with his description of the wom wundorbebodum (Michael R. Near paraphrases this as ‘the perversion of dark council’)199 of the wergan gastes ‘accursed spirits’ who attack the ‘sleeping’ victim (line 1747). Unlike such spirits, however, Grendel is unable to create the wom ‘sound’ necessary to speak such wundorbebod ‘unnatural commands’ (line 1747) to the Danes, mute on account of both his outlawry and his animality. Through his attacks he instead provokes the Danes into exchanging ‘empty plans and wasted council’ of their own when,200 in a verbal echo of wundorbebod, they wordum bædon ‘prayed with words’ (line 176) to the devil:201 Monig oft gesæt rice to rune; ræd eahtedon hwæt swiðferhðum selest wære



196



197 198

201 199 200

against the Danes; (3) Grendel bears the token of God’s anger against Cain’, i.e., the mark of Cain; Sharma, p. 269. David Sandner, ‘Tracking Grendel: The Uncanny in Beowulf’, Extrapolation, 40 (1999), 162–76 (p. 171). See p. 7 n.44 above. Expositio Lucan, ed. by Schenkl, p. 302, and Commentary on Luke, trans. by Ní Riain, p. 206. ‘Anticipating Alienation’, p. 326. Ibid., p. 327. The phrases Monig oft gesæt / rice to rune (lines 171–2) and helle gemundon (line 179) also ‘echo the description of Grendel’s moors as a place’ stalked by helrunan ‘those who shared in the knowledge of hell’ (line 163), an echo which ‘makes Grendel and his fellow hel runan […] an intertext for the Danes in council’; Carol Braun Pasternack, ‘Post-Structuralist Theories: The Subject and the Text’, in Reading Old English Texts, ed. by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 170–91 (p. 186).

187

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts wið færgryrum to gefremmanne. Hwilum hie geheton æt hærgtrafum wigweorþunga, wordum bædon þæt him gastbona geoce gefremede wið þeodþreaum. Swylc wæs þeaw hyra, hæþenra hyht; helle gemundon in modsefan, metod hie ne cuþon, dæda demend, ne wiston hie drihten god, ne hie huru heofena helm herian ne cuþon, wuldres waldend. (lines 171–83) [Many often sat, those with the authority to share their knowledge, considering counsel, what would be advisable for that strong-minded people to do against these terrible, unexpected onslaughts. At times they pledged their honour to idols at heathen shrines, prayed with words that the soul-slayer would help to deliver them from this plague on the nation. Such was their practice, the hope of those heathen people; they considered hell in their hearts, they turned away from the Maker, the judge of deeds, they did not honour the lord God. Truly they turned away from praise of the protector of heaven, the ruler of glory.]

These people, like Hrothgar and the scop, are supposed to be powerful speakers. Run most often ‘refer[s] to sharing of thoughts and dissemination of knowledge’ (the phrase æt rune ‘demonstrably means “in discussion”’),202 while ræd means ‘counsel, advice’,203 specifically with relation to speech: in Maxims I, for example, ‘the public utility of counsel demands, in the poet’s vision, that it be spoken aloud and shared’ (Ræd sceal mon secgan ‘A man must speak counsel’, line 138).204 In Maxims I, it is also said that Ræd sceal mid snyttro, ryht mid wisum ‘Counsel must be with wisdom, rightness with the wise’ (line 22),205 while

202



203 204



205

Fell, pp. 215 and 211 respectively. Fell establishes that the meanings of run given in BT, ‘whisper’, ‘secret’, and ‘that which is written, with the idea of mystery or magic’ (s.v. rūn, p. 804), are mistranslations, with another definition, ‘mystery’, ‘the relevant sense […] only in terms of Christian theology and scholarship’; ibid., p. 197, and see pp. 196–216 for a full discussion of these erroneous definitions. BT s.v. ræd, pp. 781–2. Howe, p. 7. This term is ‘used in the Latin-Old English glossaries to translate various forms of consulere “to consider, take counsel, consult”’ (Howe, p. 7), while its Germanic cognates, ‘Gothic garēdan, Old High German rātan, Old Saxon rādan, Old Norse rāđa, and Old Frisian rêda’ all ‘share the principal meanings of “to give advise [sic] or counsel,” “to exercise control over something,” and “to explain something obscure,” such as a riddle’; ibid., pp. 4–5, citing OED s.v. read. Howe, p. 7.

188

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf according to ‘Augustinian thought, true wisdom comes […] from within, from the divine truth written in the heart: “Within me, within the lodging of my thinking, there would speak a truth”’.206 In his sermon Hrothgar similarly describes how mihtig god manna cynne / þurh sidne sefan snyttru bryttað ‘the mighty God bestows wisdom upon humankind through his generous spirit’ (lines 1725–6), and he counsels Beowulf to follow God’s ece rædas ‘eternal words of counsel’ (line 1760). Yet, contrary to their king’s advice and to the ‘conventional [and] normative’ order articulated in Maxims I,207 the Danes do not hold the wisdom of God and His Word in their hearts.208 Instead, like the man in Hrothgar’s sermon who forðgesceaft / forgyteð ond forgymeð, þæs þe him ær God sealde, / wuldres waldend, weorðmynda dæl ‘fails to remember and disregards the things to come, that which God, the Ruler of Glory, had previously given, his share of honour’ (lines 1750–2), the spiritually ‘asleep’ Danes forget God and His ece rædas ‘eternal words of counsel’ (line 1760) in their pride,209 just as Satan’s ‘unræd [“lack of counsel”] specifically marks [his] lapse into oferhygd [“pride”] in Genesis

206

209 207 208

Erik Wade, ‘Language, Letters, and Augustinian Origins in the Old English Poetic Solomon and Saturn I’, JEGP, 117 (2018), 160–84 (p. 182), quoting from Saint Augustine: ‘Confessions’, trans. by Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 223. Howe, p. 6. See p. 155 above. The phrases ne cuþon and ne wiston in the above-quoted passage (lines 171–83) can be interpreted as ‘did not know’, thus contradicting the opening song of Creation (lines 90–8) by suggesting that the Danes were always heathens who had never known of God. However, since ‘in the Old English versions of Biblical texts, the verb most commonly used to express the idea of “knowing God” in the sense of “acknowledging God’s authority or assenting to His law” is cunnan’, the phrase Metod hie ne cuþon (line 180) is best interpreted as ‘they did not acknowledge or they rejected the Creator’, while ‘the structurally parallel verb in Beowulf 181b, witan […] can have a similar meaning’, so that the phrase ne wiston hie drihten god (line 181) likewise refers not to ‘not knowing’ God, but to not acknowledging him; Karl P. Wentersdorf, ‘Beowulf: The Paganism of Hrothgar’s Danes’, Studies in Philology, 78 (1981), 91–119 (pp. 108 and 110 respectively). Indeed, the man Hrothgar describes in his ‘sermon’, who is comparable to the Danes, also forðgesceaft / forgyteð ond forgymeð, þæs þe him ær God sealde, / wuldres waldend, weorðmynda dæl dæl ‘fails to remember and disregards the things to come, that which God, the Ruler of Glory, had previously given, his share of honour’ (lines 1750–2). Satan, indeed, with whom Grendel is aligned, ‘has two ways of making mischief: either he makes it directly and in his own person – he reveals himself to men, ruins their property, torments their bodies, or devours them entirely – or he seduces human persons into making mischief on his behalf’; James Smith, ‘Beowulf – II’, English, 26 (1977), 3–22 (p. 13). Perhaps Grendel therefore ‘symbolise[s] the devil in both these activities’ (ibid.), killing the Danes in body and in spirit, taking advantage of their fickle faith and lapsed vigilance by driving them into sin.

189

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts A’ (lines 29–30).210 As Ælfric warns in his Passio Eadmundi, the Word (God’s ece rædas ‘eternal words of counsel’, Beowulf, line 1760) cannot be taken for granted but must be continually sought through constant faith and vigilance against the speech-stealing devil, that wily demon who will snatch the Word from within one’s heart if given the opportunity. Thus, having forgotten God and instead helle gemundon / in modsefan ‘considered hell in their hearts’ (lines 179–80), the voices of the Danes that had once embodied God’s Word now express the devil’s perfidiam ‘treacherous designs’, embodying his evil cursum verborum ‘flow of speech’ and his inpudentiam […] disputationis ‘impudent display of rhetoric’.211 Their speech now devoid of meaning, idel ‘empty’ or ‘useless’212 like their now-hellish hall (line 413),213 their voices have been ‘silenced’, mutus est enim qui verbum dei non eadem qua est gloria confitetur ‘for when we no longer proclaim the glory of the Word of God in all its truth then indeed we are dumb’.214 The people who should ‘create community’ by binding their God-given words into shared, spoken ræd ‘counsel’ (‘in an oral culture, to give counsel is of necessity to speak and thereby to create community’)215 now tear the community apart, using their words instead to advise worship of the gastbona ‘soul-slayer’ (line 177). They become ‘anti-poet[s]’, ‘unbinder[s]’, ‘undoer[s]’, and ‘uncreator[s]’,216 damning the Danes who, on the advice of these people possessed of rice to rune ‘the authority to share their knowledge’, become outlaws from God, His Creation (the hall), and His ece rædas ‘eternal words of counsel’ (line 1760). No wonder that upon his arrival in Heorot, Beowulf must prove himself with words by overcoming three increasingly difficult ‘verbal challenges’.217 First, when confronted by the coastguard, he claims he can help Hrothgar by providing him with ræd ‘counsel’ (line 278). Unlike the Danes, with their ‘empty’ ræd ‘counsel’ and unavailing boasts that they will defeat Grendel (lines 480–8), the coastguard infers that Beowulf is able to match his words with action, stating that Æghwæþres sceal / scearp scyldwiga gescad witan, / worda ond worca, se þe wel þenceð ‘Each keen-minded shield-warrior who is thoughtful must be aware of the difference between words and Gwara, p. 216. Ambrose, Exameron, ed. by Schenkl, p. 222, and Hexameron, trans. by Savage, p. 245. 212 DOE s.v. īdel adj. [accessed 16 August 2021]. 213 See pp. 185–6 above. 214 Expositio Lucan, ed. by Schenkl, p. 302, and Commentary on Luke, trans. by Ní Riain, p. 206. 215 Howe, p. 7. 216 Williams, ‘Exile’, pp. 8–9. 217 Fred C. Robinson, ‘Beowulf’, in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp 142–59 (p. 154). 210 211

190

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf works’ (lines 287–9). Then, at Heorot, the guard warns Beowulf that the Geats must now prove themselves with words to the king himself: lætað hildebord her onbidan, / wudu wælsceaftas worda geþinges ‘let battle-shields and wooden slaughter-spears wait for the outcome of your words here’ (lines 397–8). Beowulf again succeeds, persuading Hrothgar that, unlike the boasts made by those Danes who had subsequently failed to defeat Grendel, his words have meaning (lines 407–90). Yet even though he has convinced the king his challenges are not over, for Beowulf has an even more challenging verbal opponent with whom to contend: Unferth the þyle ‘orator’ (lines 1165 and 1456).218 It is especially appropriate that Beowulf must overcome this particular figure given that Unferth possesses a ‘spiritual kinship with Grendel’,219 the creature who has been silencing Heorot for over a decade. Like Grendel, Unferth is a murderer (lines 587–8), whom Beowulf predicts in helle scealt / werhðo dreogan ‘must suffer punishment in hell’ (lines 588–9). Although werhðo refers to ‘condemnation, curse, punishment’,220 this term is related to wearg ‘criminal’, ‘accursed being’, an appropriate description for this þyle given that, like the wolfish wearg ‘criminal’, Unferth may have ‘los[t] part of his humanity’ to his misdeeds.221 Unferth too acts as a speech-stealer; just as Grendel the outlawed lupus in fabula ‘unbinds’ Heorot’s community by silencing their joyous dream ‘revelry’ (lines 88 and 99), Unferth too disrupts the song of the scop (line 496) and the renewed dream ‘revelry’ (line 497) of the hall prompted by Beowulf’s arrival, when he onband his beadurune (line 501). Onband connotes not only ‘set[ting] free’

218

221 219 220

The designation of Unferth as a þyle could indicate that he possesses some sort of ‘speaking’ role at Heorot, since this term is ‘usually translated as “orator” or “spokesman”, on the basis of later Latin glosses’; Morton W. Bloomfield, ‘Beowulf and Christian Allegory: An Interpretation of Unferth’, Traditio, 7 (1949–51), 410–15 (p. 415). It is possible that the role ‘reflected the function of a Norse þulr, an Odinic priest responsible for sacrifice and for teaching Germanic wisdom’ (Gwara, p. 89) who was ‘familiar with reading, staining, and carving runes, and, as this implies, with incantation and magic’, who was ‘an intermediary between gods (or, better, one god, Oðinn) and men’ and, as such, was ‘seem[ingly] fitted for the role of adviser to his king and clan’; Ida Masters Hollowell, ‘Unferð the þyle in Beowulf’, Studies in Philology, 73 (1976), 239–65 (p. 247). Perhaps, then, Unferth is aligned with the men who rice to rune ‘[possess] the authority to share their knowledge’ described earlier in the poem, whose ræd ‘counsel’ led the Danes to devil-worship (lines 171–8). In any case, since ‘the þulr was professionally […] a talker[,] silence was probably one of the last things associated with him’ (Hollowell, p. 244), rendering Beowulf’s ability to strike Unferth dumb particularly significant. Mason, p. 148. BT s.v. wirgþu, p. 1238. Mason, pp. 149–50.

191

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts and ‘disclos[ing]’ but also ‘unbind[ing]’,222 contrary to the role of the scop as ‘binder’ of the community through words and song, while the term beadurune ‘battle-speech’ frames Unferth’s words as an attack. Attempting to sow discord in the community and undo the bonds which hold it together, therefore, Unferth acts as an ‘anti-poet, […] an unbinder, an undoer, and an uncreator’,223 a mirror of the monster whom the Geatish hero has come to face. Aggressive in nature and intended ‘to silence a Beowulf now convinced of his inability to compete in a speaking contest with someone of the stature of Unferð’,224 this þyles ‘orator’s’ beadurune ‘battle-speech’ echoes the perfidiam ‘treacherous designs’, the evil cursum verborum ‘flow of speech’ and the inpudentiam […] disputationis ‘impudent display of rhetoric’ of Ambrose’s devilish lupus in fabula.225 Since they have already fallen victim to the speech-stealing attacks of his monstrous counterpart, it is no surprise that even despite such an ungenerous treatment of their guest, ‘no one at Hróðgár’s court seems ready to venture silencing’ or rebuking Unferth.226 Like King Edmund, however, who used his voice to defend himself against the Vikings, Beowulf counters Unferth with a speech ‘three times as long’ as the þyle’s own, which adeptly ‘answers in turn each of [his] allegations’.227 Unlike the þyle ‘orator’, Beowulf succeeds in rendering his opponent silent: Unferth has no retort, and he does not speak again for the rest of the poem.228 In another example of the ‘paradox of heroism’ in this poem,229 Beowulf therefore must act like this adversary in order to defeat him, ‘appropriat[ing] Unferth’s facts and words and turn[ing] them to his own advantage’230 and rendering his opponent silent just as the þyle ‘orator’ had attempted to do to him. Yet by acting as a speech-stealer to the speechstealer, Beowulf in fact brings the cycle of silence full circle, restoring speech and song to the hall by rendering dumb the man who had first silenced it:

224 222 223

227 228 225 226



229 230

BT s.v. on-bindan, p. 747. See also BT s.v. un-bindan, pp. 1092–3. Williams, ‘Exile’, pp. 8–9. Patricia Silber, ‘Rhetoric as Prowess in the Unferð Episode’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 23 (1981), 471–83 (p. 474). Exameron, ed. by Schenkl, p. 222, and Hexameron, trans. by Savage, p. 245. Mason, p. 148. Silber, ‘Rhetoric’, p. 475. Unferth’s silence is later mentioned specifically, when he gazes upon Grendel’s disembodied arm hanging in the hall (lines 980–4). Sharma, p. 264. See p. 181 above. Peter S. Baker, ‘Beowulf the Orator’, Journal of English Linguistics, 21 (1988), 3–23 (p. 13).

192

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf Ðær wæs hæleþa hleahtor, hlyn swynsode, word wæron wynsume. […] Þa wæs eft swa ær inne on healle þryðword sprecen, ðeod on sælum, sigefolca sweg (lines 611–12 and 642–4) [There was the laughter of men, the sound of music, the words were pleasing. […] Then within the hall, again as before, bold words were spoken, the band joyful, the clamour of a triumphant people]

Defeating and silencing Unferth, therefore, ‘is the same kind of task as killing’ and silencing Grendel,231 and by repelling and countering his verbal affront Beowulf proves that he is not only able to withstand the speech-stealing attacks of the lupus in fabula, but that he can act as a speech-stealer who might silence the monster himself. Their loud celebrations having resumed, Hrothgar knows another attack by Grendel is imminent (lines 647–51). He thus departs, appointing Beowulf as guardian of the hall in his stead (lines 652–8), a role later described as being bestowed upon the hero by the kyningwuldor ‘king of glory’ (line 665). Although this term could refer to the king himself, this hapax closely corresponds to the epithet wuldor-cyning ‘the king of glory, the Deity’;232 like Edmund, therefore, Beowulf may be a shepherd under God, who risks his life in the hopes of achieving reprieve from the lupus in fabula for others. As protector of the muþ ‘mouth’ (line 724) of the hall and the ‘voice’ of the Danes which issues from it against the depredations of another speech-stealing beast, however, he is also comparable to Edmund’s own head-guarding wolf. Beowulf alone possesses the spiritual strength and faith needed to defeat Grendel as, despite Hrothgar’s warning to Beowulf’s company that they must waca wið wraþum ‘watch against that savage one’ (line 660), only the hero stays awake (lines 703–5), the rest assuming that hie ne moste, þa metod nolde, / se scynscaþa under sceadu bregdan ‘the demonic destroyer would not be permitted to drag them under the shadows when the Maker did not will it’ (lines 706–7). Passive, complacent and mistakenly assured that they are entitled to protection by God, the Geats mirror the Danes and the subject of Hrothgar’s sermon; their sleep, too, is spiritual in nature, hence why they are not woken by the sound of the hall door crashing open (lines 721–2). Beowulf, however, remains alert and does not presume to be worthy of God’s protection. As he proves

231 232

Ibid., p. 17. BT s.v. wuldor-cyning, p. 1279. See also Klaeber, Christian Elements, pp. 9–10.

193

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts by removing his armour (lines 669–73), Beowulf makes God his ‘rock’,233 trusting in His judgement whatever the outcome of the imminent battle (lines 440–5) just as Edmund’s ‘rock’ was Christ, whom he trusted to protect his soul against the speech-stealing Danes even though he knew his life might come to an end. While the Geats sleep, Beowulf holds a lonely vigil as he waits for the monster. He is not disappointed; just as when Grendel first attacked the Danes the monster soon trespasses upon the hall, the eyes which hold the power to strike his victims dumb by espying them first glowing with ligge gelicost leoht unfæger ‘a horrible light, akin to a flame’ (line 727). With these monstrous eyes Geseah he in recede rinca manige, / swefan sibbegedriht samod ætgædere / magorinca heap ‘He saw many men in the hall, a company of kinsmen sleeping, gathered together, a band of young men’ (lines 728–30) and, knowing that his oblivious victims are powerless to prevent his indiscriminate slaughter (lines 731–3), his mod ahlog ‘his heart exulted’ (line 730). His first victim is Hondscio, whom he gefeng hraðe forman siðe ‘at the first opportunity he swiftly seized’ (line 740). This thane’s death gorily details the consequences of lapsed vigilance and faith in the face of the devilish lupus in fabula, the scene punctuated not by the anguished screams of a man being eaten alive but by the breaking of bones and the slicing of flesh, as gruesomely enacted in the alliterative pattern: the monster slat unwearnum, / bat banlocan, blod edrum dranc, / synsnædum swealh ‘effortlessly slit him open, bit his bone-enclosure apart, drank the blood from his veins, engulfed great slabs of meat’ (lines 741–3). Yet Grendel, like Hondscio himself, is ignorant of his own lupine aggressor (lines 681–3), who is watching the monster carefully and ‘through [whose] eyes we first see the way that Grendel kills’:234 þryðswyð beheold / mæg Higelaces, hu se manscaða / under færgripum gefaran wolde ‘the exceedingly powerful kinsman of Hygelac beheld how the destroyer of man would proceed with his sudden, grasping attack’ (lines 736–8). Through his faith in God and his vigilance against the incursions of this devilish, speech-stealing creature, Beowulf has the power of ‘seeing first’, and is able to counter Grendel in kind with a deadly grip of his own:

233



234

As Ambrose states: Petra tua Christus est. Si ad Christum confugias, fugit lupus nec terrere te poterit ‘Christ is your rock. If you find refuge with Christ, the wolf will take flight and not terrify you’; Exameron, ed. by Schenkl, p. 223, and Hexameron, trans. by Savage, p. 245. By depicting Beowulf as faithful to God rather than to Christ specifically, the poet demonstrates the importance of faith and vigilance against the (speech-stealing) devil, as per Ambrose’s allegorical interpretation of the lupus in fabula supersition, without comprising the pagan setting of the poem. Dana Oswald, Monsters, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), p. 76.

194

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf Forð near ætstop, nam þa mid handa higeþihtigne rinc on ræste. He him ræhte ongean, feond mid folme; he onfeng hraþe inwitþancum ond wið earm gesæt.

(lines 745–9)

[[Grendel] stepped closer forward, seizing with his hands the strong-minded warrior at rest. With his hand, the fiend reached in his direction; he swiftly seized him with malice, and pressed against the arm.]

Realising that he has been seen first, like Ambrose’s lupus in fabula who deponit ferociam, non potest currere ‘loses his fierce character and is unable to run away’,235 the monster is overcome with cowardice, consumed by the desire to flee even as he is prevented from doing so, being held in a grip even stronger than his own (lines 750–66). Perhaps he recognises the strength of the lupus in Beowulf’s hands, knowing that he, like the victim of Isidore’s wolf’s deadly paws (quidquid pede presserit non vivit ‘whatever they tread on with their paws does not live’),236 is fated to die as soon as he is touched by them. For a second time, Beowulf becomes a speech-stealer to the speechstealer, as he did in his earlier conflict with Unferth. Now, just as when the Danes discovered Grendel’s first attack and wop up ahafen, / micel morgensweg ‘a howl was thrown up, a great outcry at morning’ (lines 129–30), a final outburst of ‘wordless tears’237 before they are rendered silent, Grendel lets forth a bone-chilling howl (lines 782–7).238 Contrary to the song of Creation which bound the Danes together, Grendel’s sweg ‘outcry’ occurs at the moment of his ‘unbinding’, his arm torn off and his ‘unbinding’ from life, his journey to the ‘dark, idle, and inarticulate underworld, the closed hoard’ of hell239 imminently following. It is the anti-song of creation, a cry of destruction uttered by the bestial, outlawed anti-scop. Grendel’s final ‘song’ having come to an end, the voice of this lupus in fabula stolen as he retreats to his death, speech and song return to Heorot just as they did after Beowulf silenced Unferth. A guma gilphlæden ‘man rich

235 236



237



238



239

Exameron, ed. by Schenkl, p. 222, and Hexameron, trans. by Savage, p. 244. Etymologiarum, ed. by Lindsay, ii, lib. XII.ii.23, and Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Postscript: The Promise of Monsters’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, ed. by Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 449–64 (p. 459). Marilynn Desmond, ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Tradition’, Oral Tradition, 7 (1992), 258–83 (p. 272). See Cohen, ‘Postscript’, pp. 459–60 for more on Grendel’s outcry. Stevens, p. 221.

195

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts with famous stories’ (line 868) word oþer fand / soðe gebunden ‘summoned a series of words, bound them together truly’ (lines 870–1), joining words in song and thus re-binding the community after Grendel’s ravages, with Hrothgar subsequently giving a lengthy speech in praise of Beowulf’s victory (lines 928–42). Yet something is slightly off-kilter with both song and speech. Although the scop ‘binds’ words together, his song concludes with a jarring juxtaposition, a description of a man ‘unbound’ from his community by his crimes, Heremod (lines 898–915). Similarly, Hrothgar’s acknowledgement that God granted Beowulf victory over Grendel (lines 929–30) rings hollow in the context of the rest of his speech, during which he shows no signs of understanding why scealc hafað / þurh drihtnes miht dæd gefremede / ðe we ealle ær ne meahton snyttrum besyrwan ‘through the might of the Lord a man has accomplished this deed which we, with our wisdom, were all unable to contrive to do before’ (lines 939–42). As earlier, when he acknowledged that God eaþe mæg / þone dolscaðan dæda getwæfan ‘God can easily put a stop to the deeds of this senseless criminal’ (lines 478–9) but did not question why He had not done so, this passage ironically speaks to the lack of the very wisdom which Hrothgar claims that the Danes possess. Contrasting with the description of Beowulf as snotor ond swyðferhð ‘wise and strong-minded’ (line 826), a man whose wisdom, along with his faith in God, allowed him to defeat the devilish monster, Hrothgar’s speech only attests that the Danes’ ræd ‘counsel’ was not coupled with snyttro ‘wisdom’ (Maxims I, line 22), as it led them to worship of the same (gast)bona ‘(soul-)slayer’ by whom they were attacked (lines 177 and 1743).240 Rather than the wisdom of God’s ece rædas ‘eternal words of counsel’ (line 1760), it was helle ‘hell’ (line 179) that occupied their hearts.241 Accordingly, Heorot is not restored to its former glory as an Edenic mirror of God’s Creation; the structural damage done to the hall, metaphorising the spiritual failings which tore the Danes apart, is not repaired but merely concealed with decoration (lines 991–6). The Logos-like speech of Hrothgar remains idel ‘empty’ (line 413), the spoken command to decorate the hall conspicuously lacking the power of Creation that it had possessed previously. Hence, in opposition to the joyous song of Creation he had previously performed, the scop next sings of the fight at Finnesburg (lines 1068–159), a story of death and destruction. Instead of binding the community together, this song of an earthly community undone silences speech and laughter in the hall, which must be renewed after its conclusion (Gamen eft astah, / beorhtode bencsweg ‘Merriment rose up once more, the clamour shone from the benches’, lines 1160–1).



240 241

Orchard, Pride, p. 51. See pp. 187–8 above.

196

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf Although the physical manifestation of the threat against them has been removed, therefore, the spiritual failings which led to the monster’s attacks are yet to be addressed. Accordingly, the Danes Sigon þa to slæpe ‘Then sank into sleep’ (line 1251) swa hie oft ær dydon ‘as they had often done before’ (line 1238), the verb sigon (‘to pass from a higher to a lower position, to sink, descend, decline, fall down’)242 indicating that they remain in a ‘sunken’ state, dead in their spiritual ‘graves’. Descending into their prior complacency and ignorance (Wyrd ne cuþon, / geosceaft grimme ‘They did not know of fate, of terrible destiny’, lines 1233–4), the Danes’ invigilance here is directly contrasted with recollections of Beowulf’s role as a wæccend ‘watchman’ (line 1268) who him to anwaldan are gelyfde, / frofre ond fultum ‘trusted in the grace of the Lord, his comfort and support’ (line 1272) before his fight with Grendel. As with her son, therefore, Grendel’s Mother’s ‘attack [is] sudden and unexpected’, she too ‘an unknown quantity’.243 Again, the Danes’ unræd ‘lack of counsel’ is to blame; their selerædende ‘hall-counsellors’ knew of another monster lurking on the moors (lines 1345–51), but they did not have the foresight nor wisdom to counsel vigilance against another attack. Counterintuitively, however, Grendel’s Mother is discovered by the sleeping warriors almost as soon as she enters the hall, even despite their invigilance (lines 1280–2). Accordingly, like Grendel the lupus in fabula when he realises that he has been seen by the hero first, his mother loses her courage and flees (lines 1292–5). While it may seem odd that his mother’s presence wakens the warriors almost immediately when they had repeatedly slept through her son’s depredations,244 the uncharacteristic wakefulness of the majority of these warriors contrasts one among their company who is not, and who is thus seized by Grendel’s Mother (lines 1296–9): Æschere.

242 243



244

BT s.v. sīgan, p. 872. Richard N. Ringler, ‘Him Sēo Wēn Gelēah: The Design for Irony in Grendel’s Last Visit to Heorot’, Speculum, 41 (1966), 49–67 (p. 67). Nonetheless, these sleeping men may not be as vigilant as they appear: they are contrasted with ‘the helmets, byrnies, and spears’ which ‘are upright, alert, and ready for action’, and indeed, ‘when the singer goes on to say that it was their custom regularly to be ready for battle, there is a strong suggestion that he means the weapons […], rather than the men who are lying asleep’ (lines 1242–50); Neil D. Isaacs, ‘The Convention of Personification in Beowulf’, in Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. by Creed, pp. 215–48 (p. 226). Furthermore, ‘the scop’s final comment on these ever-ready, faithful servants is that they are a good band’ (line 1250), and it seems unlikely that the Danes and Geats are being referred to here, ‘the implication [being] that they [the armour and weapons] are a better band than the sleeping warriors because of their vigilance and foresight – they sense the approaching attack’; ibid., pp. 226–7.

197

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts Æschere is Hrothgar’s runwita and rædbora (line 1325). Run, as seen earlier, is related to spoken words and shared knowledge, while wita ‘primarily means “wise man” or, more literally, “one who knows”’;245 thus, runwita appears to refer to ‘one who calls on his own stored mind and memory to advise another’.246 Ræd, meanwhile, refers to spoken counsel and the expounding of the obscure,247 while bora, from beran (‘to carry, bear’),248 ‘implies that Æschere bears or carries his advice, therefore embodying that knowledge’.249 As a runwita ‘speech-knower’ and rædbora ‘counsel-bearer’, therefore, Æschere’s role at Heorot encompasses counselling with wisdom, bringing others to understanding and ‘binding’ the community through his well-considered spoken advice.250 That Grendel’s Mother attacks Æschere specifically is thus not a felicitous ‘panic-thrust’,251 but ‘a very deliberate statement’.252 She attacks the Danish community’s ‘voice’ once more by ‘stealing’ and killing their most important speaker, playing another turn in the speech-stealing feud initiated by Grendel and perpetuated by Beowulf when he, in turn, silenced her son (lines 1333–44). Yet by dint of his roles as a runwita ‘speech-knower’ and rædbora ‘counsel-bearer’, it is implied that Æschere belongs to the group of people described as rice to rune ‘[possessing] the authority to share their knowledge’ at the beginning of the poem, whose ræd ‘counsel’ (line 172) led the Danes into the heathenism which ‘unbound’ their community and caused their outlawry from God, His Creation (the hall), and His Word. Silencing Grendel did not return the Danes’ Logos-like speech, therefore, because their most important runwita ‘speech-knower’ and rædbora ‘counsel-bearer’ remained ‘asleep’ and did not provide the king with God’s ece rædas ‘eternal words of counsel’ (line 1760), as made clear by the fact that Hrothgar’s ‘long lament’ over Æschere’s death (lines 1322–82) ‘significantly contains not a single religious reference’.253 When they travel to the mere in search of the second monster, therefore, ‘unlike those who go searching throughout the forest in the Life of Edmund, Hrothgar’s men do not find a speaking head

245

248 249 250 251 246 247



252 253

James Paz, ‘Æschere’s Head, Grendel’s Mother, and the Sword That Isn’t a Sword: Unreadable Things in Beowulf’, Exemplaria, 25 (2013), 231–51 (p. 236). Fell, p. 213. See p. 188 above. DOE s.v. beran [accessed 4 September 2019]. Paz, p. 236. Ibid., p. 241. Stanley B. Greenfield, ‘The Extremities of the Beowulfian Body Politic’, in Saints, Scholars, and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honour of Charles W. Jones, ed. by Margot H. King and Wesley M. Stevens, 2 vols (Collegeville, MN: Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, Saint John’s Abbey and University, 1979), i, pp. 1–14 (p. 10). Paz, p. 234. Edward B. Irving, Jr, ‘The Nature of Christianity in Beowulf’, ASE, 13 (1984), 7–21 (p. 15).

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The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf but a silent object’:254 God has not granted the Danes a miracle. Rather than being guarded by a tame wolf, Æschere’s head is instead tauntingly displayed on the Grendelkin’s wulfhleoþu ‘wolf-slopes’, a gruesome witness to the Danes’ stolen speech and their now-silent speaker. Beowulf must therefore act as a lupus in fabula to the Grendelkin once again, playing another turn in the speech-stealing feud. This time, however, the tables are turned; Beowulf ‘assumes the role Grendel had played at Heorot’ as he descends to the mere-hall,255 thus becoming the lupus to Grendel’s Mother as Grendel had previously been to him. Consequently, the hero is this time at a distinct disadvantage as, like the monster who was unaware of the fate that awaited him (lines 734–6), Beowulf too ‘descend[s] into [the] pool in almost total ignorance of what to expect’.256 Grendel’s Mother, meanwhile, assumes Beowulf’s own prior role, observing the hero approaching (lines 1495–500) just as he watched her son entering Heorot. As in the previous prelude to the fight, we see through the eyes of both hero and adversary as, ‘just when we see the bottom through the eyes of the descending Beowulf, the poet suddenly realigns us with the upward scrutiny of Grendel’s mother, who sees him enter her land of alien creatures from above’:257 Ða wæs hwil dæges ær he þone grundwong ongytan mehte. Sona þæt onfunde se ðe floda begong heorogifre beheold hund missera, grim ond grædig, þæt þær gumena sum ælwihta eard ufan cunnode. (lines 1495–500)

[Then it was a large part of the day before he was able to see the lake floor. Immediately, that savage, greedy creature who had held the flood’s expanse for a hundred half-years, cruel and gluttonous, discovered that a man sought out that dwelling-place of strange creatures from above.]

That she has assumed Beowulf’s role as the waiting, watching lupus in fabula is compounded by the fact that, as she drags the hero to her underwater lair, Grendel’s Mother is termed a brimwylf ‘sea-wolf’ (line 1506), verbally echoing the hero’s own name. Grendel’s Mother therefore has the advantage over Beowulf because, like the lupus in Grendel’s fabula during her son’s raid on Heorot, she 256 257 254 255

Paz, p. 240. Mason, p. 159. Ringler, p. 67. Geoffrey Russom, ‘At the Center of Beowulf’, in Myth in Early Northwest Europe, ed. by Glosecki, pp. 225–40 (p. 234).

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts has seen him first. Thus, just as Beowulf seized hold of Grendel in Heorot, Grendel’s Mother quickly Grap […] togeanes, guðrinc gefeng / atolan clommum ‘Grasped towards him, seized the warrior in her terrible clutches’ (lines 1501–2). Although, like both Grendel (lines 798–808) and his mother,258 Beowulf is invulnerable to her weapons – her knife-like claws (lines 1502–5) – because he has had the foresight to armour himself (lines 1441–54), he nevertheless remains unable to escape Grendel’s Mother’s grip, just as her son was powerless to escape his own. As with Grendel and the lupus in fabula who has been seen first, Beowulf is thus forced to ‘put[] aside his bold ferocity’,259 rendered incapable of striking at the sea-monsters that attack him as he is dragged by the brimwylf ‘sea-wolf’ to the depths (lines 1508–12). When they reach her hall, the grundwyrgenne ‘accursed being of the deep’ (line 1518) steals the ‘speech’ of Beowulf’s sword (borrowed, perhaps ill-advisedly, from Unferth).260 In its moment of failure Hrunting agol / grædig guðleoð ‘sang a greedy battle-song’ (lines 1521–2); here, ‘just as Grendel had earlier discovered his impending doom after singing a death song’, Hrunting is likewise rendered mute and powerless after a final outcry.261 The sword having failed, Beowulf must once again rely on his mundgripe ‘hand-grip’ (line 1534) and his battle-fury (line 1539). Yet despite both having served him so well in his fight against her son (who is, in fact, slightly stronger than his mother, lines 1282–7), Grendel’s Mother still him eft hraþe andlean forgeald / grimman grapum ‘swiftly paid him back his recompense, a terrible grip’ (lines 1541–2), just as Beowulf held her son in a grames grapum ‘fierce grip’ (line 765). Pinned down by the monster, like Grendel (line 1002) Beowulf is aldres orwena ‘despairing of life’ (line 1565),262 his ferocity having failed him after being seen first by the lupus in fabula. Nonetheless, the hero does have recourse to a second, more powerful assurance against the speech-stealing wolf which only he possesses: his ‘rock’. God has been watching the proceedings, protecting Beowulf and giving him the strength to regain his feet (lines 1550–6), whereupon the hero sees the giant’s sword with which he finally succeeds in felling the monster (lines 1557–69). Runes inscribed on the hilt of this sword detail the destruction of the giants by God during the flood (lines 1688–98). Given that they are geseted ond gesæd ‘set down and spoken’ (line 1696) by the sword’s maker, these runes The verb bitan ‘to bite’ in this passage (line 1454), which here describes how Beowulf’s armour is resistant to weapons, is also later used to describe how Hrunting bitan nolde ‘would not bite’ Grendel’s mother (line 1523). 259 Isidore, Etymologies, trans. by Barney et al., p. 253. 260 See lines 1455–72. Unferth is himself a ‘speech-stealer’ who is aligned with the Grendelkin; who has already been silenced by Beowulf; and who belongs to a community rendered mute. It is no wonder that this sword loses its ‘voice’. 261 Paul Beekman Taylor, ‘Themes of Death in Beowulf’, in Old English Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. by Creed, pp. 249–74 (p. 269). 262 Mason, p. 160.

258

200

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf could be associated either with the devil’s malignant run as spoken by his agents, the giants, or with God and the power of His Word, through which the giants were destroyed.263 With its ambiguous runes, this sword recalls a similar weapon described in Solomon and Saturn I, upon which Awriteð he […] wællnota heap, / bealwe bocstafas, bill forscrifeð, / meces mærðo ‘He carves a multitude of slaughter-marks, pernicious characters blunting his sword, a wonderful blade’ (lines 161–3). Here, the referent of he is ambiguous: ‘the positive associations of “the glory of the sword” [meces mærðo] suggest that’ the inscription could be ‘victory-runes’ written by God, though it is equally possible that he refers to the subject of the prior lines, Satan, in which case the inscription ‘may be death-runes that cast a spell on the sword and render it useless’.264 Whoever is the author of these runes, however, the wielder of the weapon sceal singan, ðonne he his sweord geteo, / Pater Noster ‘must sing the Pater Noster when he draws his sword’ (lines 166–7). If the runes are divine, this suggests that ‘their power […] could be enhanced, even brought to life, by the spoken words of the man who wields the sword’, while if they are death-runes, the Pater Noster would ‘function as a counter-spell’.265 In any case, in both scenarios the power of divine speech must be drawn upon either to bring the runes to life or to counteract their malignant power.266 If God is the author of Beowulf’s sword-runes, perhaps the hero ‘speaks’ them to life when, by killing Grendel’s Mother, he re-enacts the death of the giants which the runes detail. Indeed, as in Solomon and Saturn I, in which the power of God is channelled through the mouth of the speaker (Mæg simle se Godes cwide gumena gehwylcum / ealra feonda gehwane fleondne gebrengan / ðurh mannes muð ‘The speech of God can always be used by each person to make every one of the demons flee, through the mouth of man’, lines 146–8), Beowulf’s speech is later described as God-given: Þe þa wordcwydas wigtig drihten / on sefan sende ‘Those remarks were sent into your heart by the sagacious Lord’ (lines 1841–2). On the other hand, perhaps the sword is inscribed with hellish death-runes which Beowulf has ‘silenced’ by his professions of faith in God, as in Solomon and Saturn I, whereby ‘the silencing of the devil is […] accomplished by the speaking of the Pater Noster’ (lines 94–133).267 Either scenario would explain why the sword’s hilt remains intact while the blade melts, given that both If the latter, this weapon may be compared to the gladio verbi Dei ‘sword of the Word of God’ described by Alcuin in a letter to Charlemagne; Goldsmith, ‘Christian Perspective’, p. 84. See Alcuin, Epistolae, in Epistolae Karolini aevi II, ed. by Dümmler, p. 207. 264 Nelson, p. 32. 265 Ibid. 266 Ibid., p. 33. 267 Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 57.

263

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts God’s Word268 and the devil and his magical arts are eternal, the latter of which having survived the Flood because they were written down by Cham.269 In any case, this sword reaffirms that, as at the beginning of the poem with the construction of Heorot, divine words brought to life in speech possess power. Beowulf subsequently uses the same blade to decapitate Grendel (lines 1575–90), again echoing the monster’s own actions in Heorot by ‘slay[ing] Grendel now exactly as Grendel had slain the thirty men’ as well as Hondscio, ‘off guard, on ræste [“at rest”]’ (lines 1585, 122 and 747 respectively).270 Afterwards, Beowulf leaves the mere and departs for Heorot. Yet, in a seemingly illogical ‘exchange’ given that requital for Æschere’s murder would suggest that the hero should return with the head of Grendel’s Mother, he instead takes as a trophy the head of her son. According to the speech-stealing feud, however, Grendel’s is the correct head with which to return since it brings the exchange of ‘speakers’ full circle. In so doing, Beowulf provides proof that the lupus in fabula who first stole Heorot’s speech is now silenced himself, an outcome affirmed by the hero when he recounts the tale to Hygelac, ‘claim[ing] that none of Grendel’s kin over the earth will be able to boast of the din that night when he defeated Grendel’ (lines 2005–9).271 Yet despite the speech-feud seemingly having come to an end, the Danes are once again silenced upon seeing Grendel’s head: Þa wæs be feaxe on flet boren Grendles heafod, þær guman druncon, egeslic for eorlum ond þære idese mid, wliteseon wrætlic; weras on sawon. (lines 1647–50) [Then Grendel’s head was brought by the hair to the hall, where the men were drinking, dreadful for the warriors and the women with them there, an incredible sight to behold; the men looked upon it.]

268 269



270



271

See p. 149 above. See the passage from the Irish Reference Bible quoted above at p. 173. Neidorf argues that ‘it is hard to believe that the poet conceived of an idea for an imperishable hilt, resting underwater and transmitting antediluvian secrets, without awareness of the traditions […] which ascribed such metallic inscriptions to Cam’; ‘Cain’, p. 614. Arthur E. Du Bois, ‘The Unity of Beowulf’, PMLA, 49 (1934), 374–405 (p. 375). The same phrase is also used of Æschere, who was on ræste ‘at rest’ when he was snatched by Grendel’s Mother (line 1298). The use of this phrase to describe the dead Grendel in a passage in which he is explicitly compared to his sleeping victims again suggests that the Danes were spiritually ‘dead’ earlier in the poem; see p. 185 above. Carlson, p. 363.

202

The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf As they look upon the gruesome spectacle of this monstrous decapitated body-part, ‘something so horrifying emanates from beneath the severed head’s gory locks that the viewers’ gaze becomes stuck, as if the dead object itself obscenely glares back’.272 Grendel’s eyes retain their speech-stealing powers even in death, and one more turn is played in the lupus in fabula feud, now lost by the Danes. For, although the speech-stealing Grendelkin are dead and silenced, the speech of the Danes has not been restored because the shortcomings which allowed them to be silenced in the first place – invigilance and lapsed faith – remain unaddressed. Likewise, although this pair of speech-stealing monsters has been slain ‘the devil, whose servants [Beowulf] has overcome, will not withdraw from the contest’,273 and the ever-unvigilant, prideful Danes remain vulnerable his depredations. Thus, as when the onlookers of Grendel’s head are silenced, Hrothgar is likewise left speechless when he gazes upon the hilt; though it is stated that he maðelode ‘made a speech’ (line 1687) the king is in fact silent for ten lines,274 in an ‘unprecedented’ break in the text during which the poet instead gives voice to the hilt’s inscription (lines 1688–98).275 Then, when Hrothgar’s speech resumes, there is no indication that he can ‘interpret what he sees’, since the verb which describes his observation of the hilt, sceawian (line 1687), ‘merely means that the king “looked at” or “examined” the thing’ rather than penetrating and understanding it.276 In the speech that follows, therefore, Hrothgar does not appear to address the runes at all; either these are devilish runes which rob him of his voice, like Grendel, or they are divine runes which he is unable to ‘speak’ to life, as did Beowulf.277 Rather than addressing the runes, Hrothgar instead chooses to warn Beowulf against becoming like Heremod and the man attacked by the wergan gast ‘accursed spirit’ (lines 1700–84). Given Beowulf’s similarities

272 273



274



275



276 277

Cohen, Of Giants, p. 64. Margaret E. Goldsmith, ‘The Christian Theme of Beowulf’, Medium Ævum, 29 (1960), 81–101 (p. 91). Johann Köberl, ‘The Magic Sword in Beowulf’, Neophilologus, 71 (1987), 120–8 (p. 120). Arthur G. Brodeur, ‘Design for Terror in the Purging of Heorot’, JEGP, 53 (1954), 503–13 (p. 512 n.14). Paz, p. 247. As Paz notes, ‘Hrothgar has been forced into the role of reader due to the absence of Æschere […] to stand in for the deceased rune-knower and to interpret and explain [the inscription] himself’; ‘Unreadable Things’, p. 247. Even if Æschere had survived, however, there is nothing to suggest that he would have understood the runes either, especially given his prior flawed ræd ‘counsel’ and the failure of the people rice to run ‘with the authority to share their knowledge’ to whom Æschere presumably belongs.

203

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts to the lycanthropic Sigmund as well as to the monsters – to whom Heremod is also comparable278 – this would appear to be a well-considered reminder to Beowulf that he must not allow himself to descend from goodness, humility and generosity into evilness, pride and avarice. He must not, Hrothgar warns, allow his wolfish side to take over, to become like the lupine monsters he has defeated. Yet the wisdom of Hrothgar’s advice is called into question when one considers that the king himself is already far more similar to the monsters than Beowulf. The pride which waxes within the Danes even as they are laid low by the monsters is elsewhere associated with wolves (‘men driven by avarice […] are like wolves’ since, ‘though “wicked men cease to be what they were,” they retain the “appearance of their human bodies”’),279 and is the crime of which both the wulfheort ‘wolf-hearted’ king of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar,280 and the wolf of the New Testament, the devil, are guilty.281 It was as a direct result of this pride that Grendel was first able to attack the Danes, through which they were cast out from their Edenic hall and from God to become companions to the wolfish monster in outlawry from their hall, their Logos-like voices silenced so that they neglected God’s ece rædas ‘eternal words of counsel’ (line 1760) and instead pursued heathenish word ‘words’ (lines 175–8). They become ‘wordless’ wolves, their outcry as they lose their voices (wop up ahafen, / micel morgensweg ‘a howl was thrown up, a great outcry at morning’, lines 129–30) mirroring the lupine howling of the Israelites in Exodus as they lose their voices to the wolfish Egyptians: wop up ahafen, / atol æfenleoð ‘a howl was thrown up, a terrible evening-song’ (lines 200–1). That Hrothgar directs his own ræd ‘counsel’ towards advising the hero who has saved them from the wolfish monsters thus ironically evidences the same pride against which he warns the hero, and of which he has been consistently guilty throughout the poem. Hrothgar’s speech thus ‘counterpoints the opening performance of the scop in Heorot’ by ‘creat[ing] an envelope pattern in which the

278



279



280



281

Like the ulfheðnar-like Beowulf and Grendel, who become gebolgen ‘swollen with anger’, Heremod becomes bolgenmod ‘enraged’ (line 1713) and him on ferhþe greow / breosthord blodreow ‘in his heart a murderous breast-hoard grew’ (lines 1718–19). Consequently, he is outlawed (lines 901–15), a fate which ‘recalls that of Grendel’; Orchard, Pride, p. 48. Damico, p. 186, quoting from Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. by Richard Green (New York, NY: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), pp. 82–3. Hrothgar’s sermon itself contains a number of ‘Boethian remarks’ (Scowcroft, p. 46), suggesting the poet may have known this text. See p. 29 above. Gillian R. Overing compares Nebuchadnezzar to the prideful man described in Hrothgar’s sermon; see ‘Nebuchadnezzar’s Conversion in the Old English Daniel: A Psychological Portrait’, Papers on Language and Literature, 20 (1984), 3–14 (p. 10). See p. 45 above.

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The Speech-stealing weargas and wulfas of Beowulf central events of Beowulf’s Danish narrative transpire’.282 The king has not regained his status as a ‘verbal ruler’, but rather, the words which once mirrored those of God, ‘whose word is His deed’,283 now contradict the king’s actions. Likewise, there are no joyous celebrations in the hall to signal that the Danes have regained their Word-like speech nor the power with which it was imbued, and Heorot does not ‘return[] to its condition of the perfect society […] based on Christian ideology and of communicating that ideology through the use of language’.284 Instead, the Danes remain spiritually ‘asleep’, continuing to live in outlawry from God and His Word. It is no surprise, then, that the king sleeps in his hall once more (lines 1790–2), darkness descending upon the Danes (Nihthelm geswearc / deorc ofer dryhtgumum ‘The cover of night darkened, a shadow over the retainers’, lines 1789–90) just as it did before Grendel’s attack (nipende niht ofer ealle, / scaduhelma gesceapu scriðan cwoman / wan under wolcnum ‘the night was growing dark over them all, the cover of shadows came gliding, dark beneath the clouds of night’, lines 649–51). One wonders what sorts of devilish creatures will torment the Danes in nights to come, as they ‘sleep after the feast’ in blissful ignorance once more.285

Conclusion: wulfas and weargas in Beowulf Beowulf presents contrasting pictures of wolfish ‘liminality’. The monsters ‘offer[] a decidedly negative picture’, being ‘neither man nor beast’ but creatures who ‘haunt[] the fringes of society’; strange, hybrid monsters who oscillate between disgraced humans, shadowy demons of Satan, and water-dwelling creatures of the deep, neither one thing nor the other and, in this, much like the wolf(ish outlaws) of Wulf. Being ‘exaggerated picture[s] of the outlaw, the “wolf’s head,” who ha[ve] lost the protection of society’ as well as that of God, these monsters provide ‘a fearful’ – but unheeded – ‘reminder of damnation’ to the Danes, a people who also ‘occupy a Lerer, p. 174. Ibid. 284 Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 13. 285 Paul Battles describes a ‘recurrent scene’ found in Old English poetry – including Beowulf – which he terms the ‘Sleeping after the Feast theme’, in which ‘feasting, sleeping, and danger powerfully attract one another’, such that ‘the three motifs form a deadly triangle, wherein the presence of any two suffices to summon the third’. Thus, the depiction of a feast, ‘followed by sleep, constitutes a “Chekhov gun”: a threat always, inevitably, follows’; ‘Dying for a Drink: “Sleeping after the Feast” Scenes in Beowulf, Andreas, and the Old English Poetic Tradition’, Modern Philology, 112 (2015), 435–57 (pp. 436 and 437–8 respectively). 282 283

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts precariously liminal situation’.286 Yet, ‘unlike their hero, they are unable to better it’,287 unable to redeem themselves as members of a human community bound by speech and the divine Logos of God, but instead remaining speechless, bestial outlaws in kinship with the devil. Beowulf himself, on the other hand, ‘use[s] his [lupine] liminality’ to defeat his monstrous opponents,288 turning their own wolfishness against them to, paradoxically, assert the superiority of the human over the animal, and of God over the wolfish devil. As in the passiones, in Beowulf two types of wolves are counterpointed, the ‘good wolf’ Beowulf, ‘tamed’ by his faith in God, in juxtaposition with the ‘bad wolves’, the monstrous agents of Satan. Both wolf-like aglæcan ‘fierce ones’ who dwell at the boundaries of humanity and animality, Beowulf and Grendel are distinguished by their actions, in much the same way that the behaviour of the sympathetic wolfen outcast, Wulf, differentiates him from the wolf-like wælreowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ in Wulf.289 Grendel and his mother compound their outlawry by behaving like wolves and, in circularity, they behave like wolves because of their outlawry from God and society,290 while through faith in God and the power of His ece rædas ‘eternal words of counsel’ (line 1760), Beowulf does not slip into criminality and wolfish outlawry, but channels his potentially problematic lupine qualities towards heroic and spiritually righteous pursuits. In fact, it is the Danes who are most akin to the wolfish, demonic monsters, their fate demonstrating that even a society based in God-given ‘word-exchange’291 can ‘sink’ (sigon, line 1251) into sin if pride and invigilance are allowed to fester, and faith in God is forgotten in favour of material pleasure. As a result, they lose their speech to the devilish lupus in fabula, becoming bestial, silent outlaws little better than the monsters themselves. Beowulf can thus be read, in part, as a narrative which allegorizes the power of the Word and the importance of constant faith within it. The silencing attacks of Grendel upon the spiritually ‘asleep’ Danes metaphorise the consequences of failure to protect the Word within from the depredations of the devilish lupus in fabula. The hero, on the other hand, demonstrates the miraculous power of faith in God, which not only keeps him safe from the speech-stealing, devilish Grendelkin but allows him to use his own wolfishness to silence the monsters, to become the lupus in their fabula.

Higley, ‘Liminality’, p. 347. Ibid. 288 Ibid. 289 See pp. 116–17 above. 290 See pp. 48–9 above. 291 Williams, ‘Exile’, p. 3. 286 287

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Conclusion: The Stories Wolves Tell

O

n that autumn afternoon spent turning the pages of the manuscripts housed in the Pierpont Morgan Library, Barry Holstun Lopez reached through time to the ‘people who wrote or printed’ the texts over which he pored, ‘people who sat down to dinner like you and me, who marveled at the universe, who stood up and stretched at the end of the day’.1 Although these people ‘have long since turned to dust, […] what they wrote remains behind’, a textual ‘heritage’ to which ‘even we in a more modern age are bound’;2 for, while time divides us from them, we are connected to these people by the threads of traditions found within the books that they wrote. Along these threads travel the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of our forefathers, cultural memories from which we construct our own imagined ‘wolf’ today. So too were our ancestors connected to those who had come before them. They pored over the manuscripts of their forefathers as we do ours; they too were bound to the textual ‘heritage’ of their ancestors by the threads of tradition found within, their conceptualisations of the wolf and the natural world constructed from associations inherited and borrowed from earlier and analogous cultural and literary traditions. Yet the wolf is not merely ‘a passive slate upon which humans scratch and erase meaning’ but ‘an active agent’ in human history and culture,3 the texts in which it appears shaping and shaped by wolf-human relationships in the real world. Hence, by ‘mediat[ing] between semiotic culturalism on the one hand and factual naturalism on the other’ when we read these texts,4 we may reach a deeper understanding of the wolf-human relationship in early medieval England, discovering hints of the ‘real’ wolf and its interactions with the people who wrote these stories. In turn, deconstructing the textual wolf allows us to consider how such literature may have impacted upon the attitudes of its readers and listeners towards the wolves whom they lived alongside. ‘The social and cultural wolves that are imagined and constructed from […] biological wolves’ are ‘imposed

Lopez, p. 205. Ibid. 3 Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 9. 4 Borgards, p. 156. 1 2

Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts back on them’,5 cultural perceptions confirming and confirmed by the behaviour of wolves and wolf-like people, a cyclical process whereby art imitates life and so life imitates art. By considering the role of the wolf in the physical landscapes of early medieval England in conjunction with the sources – folkloric, literary, and cultural – which were drawn upon by Old English writers, therefore, we may respond to the works indebted to them in a manner ‘closer to that of the original audience’ and ‘to that intended’ by their authors.6 As a result, in examining the literature in which wolves are represented, recorded, and reimagined we penetrate the minds of those who wrote about them, discovering how those living in early medieval England used this animal as a vehicle to meditate upon and construct identity, and to consider the human’s place in the natural world. Contemplating the wolves within these texts gives us a window to the human. In so doing, we may uncover complexities which better reflect these texts as products of actual, living beings who were full of the same contradictions and idiosyncrasies as we are today. Hence, in examining the wolf/outlaw association and the speech-stealing wolf superstition, we discover that conceptualisations of this animal by writers in early medieval England were far more nuanced ‘than may be suggested by more generic stereotypes’.7 ‘Wolfishness’ is not ‘always a negative characterization in Old English poetry’, nor is it always ‘attributed to humans’ or monsters (such as Vikings of the passiones and Beowulf’s Grendelkin) ‘who are greedy, violent, manipulative, or heathen (and usually all four)’.8 Rather, wolves and wolfishness are imbued with far greater complexity than such purported absolutes would imply, these animals playing a more complex role in the debates surrounding the nature of humanity and animality than surface appearances may suggest. Wulf’s weras are in fact more bestial than the titular character and his lupine lover, and it is the ‘wolves’ of this poem, not the ‘humans’, with whom we sympathise. In this, Wulf parallels a number of the Exeter Book riddles which challenge an anthropocentric worldview by adopting the perspective of an animal for whom, frequently, humans are ‘the enemy’, eliciting the audience’s empathy by ‘protest[ing] their killing for human utility’.9 Wulf likewise ‘open[s] the possibility for a recognition that human perspectives are limited and limiting’,10 offering a sympathetic view of lupine beings by portraying the peril and loneliness of the 7 8 9 5 6



10

Marvin, ‘Wolves’, p. 65. Pettitt, p. 527. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 5. Spears, p. 135. Estes, pp. 32 and 104 respectively. Ibid., p. 141.

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Conclusion: The Stories Wolves Tell wolf(ish outlaw)’s world through the eyes of such a figure. Perhaps, like Farley Mowat, the poet recognised that the view of the wolf as a ‘mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer […] is, in reality, not more than a reflected image of ourselves’.11 In Beowulf, as in Wulf, a fine and traversable line is drawn between ‘human’ and ‘animal’, with both hero and monster sharing lupine traits. The Grendelkin’s wolfishness is manifested as rapacity, bloodlust, and cannibalistic hunger, used to destroy and silence the community that excluded them; Beowulf’s wolfishness grants him strength and speech-stealing powers to match the monsters, with which he kills and silences these agents of Satan. Nonetheless, just as the wolfish ‘men’ and the sympathetic ‘wolves’ in Wulf are distinguished by their behaviour, the distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ wolfishness in Beowulf is clearly defined, discernible as the difference between how each figure chooses to use it. Indeed, one crucial difference between Beowulf and his adversaries far outweighs all similarities combined: the hero’s faith in God. This not only renders Beowulf impervious to the Grendelkin’s speech-stealing attacks; it prevents him from using his wolfishness for ignoble, evil pursuits, ensuring that he does not transform into a monstrous lupus in fabula himself. Herein lie the determinants for whether wolfishness is heroic or monstrous: what and who it is used for and against; and whether it is used for divine good or the devil’s evil. Like the Grendelkin, the Vikings of Abbo and Ælfric’s passiones exemplify wolfishness employed for evil pursuits, attempting to use their speech-stealing powers to carry out the devil’s work and silence the holy King Edmund. Although the king is unable to silence them in kind as Beowulf did with his own enemies, Edmund’s faith likewise protects his speech and the Word of God within his heart. Even after the king’s death, therefore, his voice is not silenced. His decapitated head miraculously retains the ability to speak and is kept safe by a lupine guardian who, held at bay by the faith of both Edmund and his followers, is unable to devour the head and Edmund’s voice along with it. These passiones not only demonstrate the power of faith in God; the narratives themselves display the power of speech not only in their content but in their own transmission. Through oral telling and retelling, and through the spread of folklore about the speech-stealing power of the wolf, this remarkable story appears to have come into existence. By examining the lupus in such fabulae as the passiones and Beowulf, then, we may uncover hints of a folkloric superstition that circulated by word-of-mouth for millennia, crossing seas and traversing borders, reproduced, recoded and recorded as it travelled. How many other narratives composed in early medieval

11

Never Cry Wolf (New York, NY: Back Bay Books, 2001), p. viii.

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts England might owe their essence or existence to folkloric and inherited material, and what could they, in turn, tell us about the stories and beliefs in circulation at this time? One seemingly exhausted lupine narrative element, for example, may yet be revived when considered in relation to the speech-stealing wolf superstition: the Beast of Battle topos. ‘The attribution of voice and even of language to the beasts’, as Joseph Harris notes, is found fourteen times across six of the poems in which the topos appears,12 whereby ‘bestial yelling’ is depicted ‘as melodious or articulate sound’.13 Alice Jorgensen has suggested that ‘the song of the beasts represents an inversion of and threat to human language; they point to the silencing of human voices and the destruction of human bodies, which they hope to dismember and eat’.14 This is true of the lupine Beasts – both human and animal – in Exodus; the terror instilled by the Egyptian heoruwulfas ‘sword-wolves’ (line 181) and the wolves which follow them on the march (lines 155–69) into the Israelites is such that they ‘lose faith […] in their prophet Moses, who transmits to them the words of God’ (line 154).15 As a result, like the victim of the lupus in fabula who is not steadfastly faithful to God, the Israelites are left speechless when the wolfish Egyptians attack: Forþon wæs in wicum wop up ahafen, atol æfenleoð, egesan stodon, weredon wælnet, þa se woma cwom. Flugon frecne spel (lines 200–3) [Thus a howl was thrown up in the camp, a terrible evening-song, terror arose when the sound came to those warriors trapped in the slaughter-net. Fierce words flew away]

However, Moses succeeds in galvanising his people and reviving the song of their trumpets (lines 211–23),16 which ‘marks the moment at which the Israelites regain faith, initiative, and the power of speech’.17 Instead, it is the faithless Egyptians ‘who have their words undone and [are] finally silenced’, Joseph Harris, ‘Beasts of Battle, South and North’, in Source of Wisdom, ed. by Wright, Biggs and Hall pp. 3–25 (p. 11). 13 Alice Jorgensen, ‘The Trumpet and the Wolf: Noises of Battle in Old English Poetry’, Oral Tradition, 24 (2009), 319–36 (p. 323). 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 328. 16 In this poem, ‘trumpets function as an extension of the human voice’, an ‘association […] explicit in the phrase hludum stefnum (“with loud voices,” 99)’, which is used of the instruments, and which is echoed when ‘at 276 Moses hof … hlude stefne (“raised up a loud voice”) and at 575 the troops hofon … hlude stefne (“raised up a loud voice”) as they praise God’; Jorgensen, p. 327. 17 Ibid., p. 329.

12

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Conclusion: The Stories Wolves Tell unable to ‘tell their story’ (lines 449–55 and 506–15),18 much like the Grendelkin after they are silenced by the titular hero of Beowulf (lines 2005–9). Like the lupine beasts of battle, wolves throughout the Old English and Anglo-Latin corpuses howl loudly. Each sings with a voice of varying pitch and tone, creating a complex, multitoned melody which affirms that these animals were not merely man-eating, speech-stealing agents of the devil, haunting the darkness of a ‘world “lit only by fire”’,19 but creatures which could perform miracles, whose traits might be used for noble and divine pursuits by a hero, and who, maligned in so many ways, might even elicit empathy in those who considered their plight at the hands of humans. They were animals who carried within them tales from times gone by or from lands beyond the sea, and yet they told new and unique stories spoken nowhere else. They inspired and terrified; evoked hatred and admiration; ‘lop[ed] along with that bicycling gait’ through so many manuscripts, just as they have ‘through all of human history’. But they do not go silently, ‘uttering […] not a word’.20 Like all of the wolves woven into these written words, the wolf in the story of medieval England has many tales to tell, and many songs to sing, if we are only willing to hear them. It is vital that we listen, for ‘past attitudes have deeply influenced the relationships between humans and wolves throughout history’,21 with the early medieval period in England serving as nexus ‘for many of our current social formulations and constructions’ concerning wolves.22 Thus, ‘examining how people of the distant past told stories about their environments can help us to understand contemporary stories’ and the attitudes which inform them,23 an exercise especially pertinent in the case of the wolf for, like the monster, this animal has become ‘pure culture’,24 its ‘symbolic status […] so strong that biological facts about the animal are often irrelevant’,25 even in the context of management decisions.26 In Ibid. Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 1. 20 Lopez, p. 206. 21 ‘Ecological and Cultural Diversities in the Evolution of Wolf-Human Relationships’, in Ecology and Conservation of Wolves in a Changing World, ed. by Ludwig N. Carbyn, Steven H. Fritts and Dale Roy Seip, Canadian Circumpolar Institute Occasional Publications, 35 (Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute, University of Alberta, 1995), pp. 3–12 (p. 3). 22 Estes, p. 10. 23 Ibid., p. 190. 24 Cohen, ‘Monster Theory’, p. 4. 25 Steven H. Fritts et al., ‘Wolves and Humans’, in Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, ed. by Mech and Boitani, pp. 289–316 (p. 290). 26 In early 2021, for example, a government-sanctioned hunt in Wisconsin, USA, saw hundreds of wolves slaughtered in the name of meeting ‘conservation 18 19

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Wolves in Beowulf and Other Old English Texts the context of the present-day climate and biodiversity crises, the Anthropocene extinction, and the recognition of the wolf as a keystone species, understanding the history which brought us to this point is crucial. Robert N. Watson puts it best: The attitudes toward nature underlying the current heedless conduct of so many of the world’s industrial societies took shape hundreds of years ago and cannot be effectively addressed until they are understood. The assumption that our crisis is entirely recent – pollution ex nihilo – and addressable only by focusing on our present politics reflects a narrow, anti-ecological view. Our species will wither alone in the shadows of an ancient loss, […] unless we cast some light on the antecedent relations between human and nonhuman life.27

In Britain and Ireland today, as previously infrequent whispers of the wolf’s return slowly become persistent dialogue about whether we can bring back the wolf (or perhaps, rather, whether we can afford not to), it is more important than ever that we ‘give the future of [our] wolf populations, and human-wolf relations, a meaningful past’28 so that we, in our increasingly fragile natural world, may shape a future which includes both species. Before we can unravel the cultural ‘clothing’ in which we have clad wolves, we must understand where, how, and why it was woven. Likewise, we must also unravel current misconceptions of both wolves and of their past relationships with people, a task equally vital since ‘historical experiences with wolves are frequently employed to inform current conditions and predict future responses, from a cultural as much as an ecological perspective’.29 Acknowledging the existence of historical zoocentric and empathetic approaches to the animal world separates the lived experience of those who shared the landscape with wolves from stereotypes of ‘Dark Age’ England as a place where people lived in fear of the bloodthirsty, man-eating creatures of the wilds beyond civilisation, an ‘image reinforced by selective recreations of the Middle Ages in the popular Western imagination – particularly through the lens of gothic romance’.30 In 2021, for example, the chief executive of the Tenant Farmers Association described the possibility of predator reintroduction as ‘some misguided idea about returning Britain to a sort of medieval

targets’, a massacre that was no more than glorified pest control based upon despisal and fear of these animals. 27 ‘Shadows of the Renaissance’, in The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism, ed. by Greg Garrard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 40–59 (p. 40). 28 Pluskowski, Wolves, p. 199. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., p. 1.

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Conclusion: The Stories Wolves Tell wasteland’,31 betraying a stereotypical view of ‘Dark Age’ Britain as a wolf-infested, barren landscape. It is in fact today’s Britons, living in one of the most nature-denuded countries in Europe, whose home is a ‘wasteland’; according to a 2019 report, almost 1,200 species of flora and fauna found in the UK are considered at risk of extinction, while at least 133 native species – including the wolf – have already been wiped out since the year 1500.32 The Biodiversity Intactness Index, which ‘estimates the average abundance of originally-present species, across many taxa, relative to their abundance in undisturbed habitat’, suggests that the UK is the 189th-least biodiverse country of the 218 which have been assessed.33 We have far less to fear from the wolf than we do from the future of our rapidly decaying natural world, and the futility of our as-yet underwhelming attempts to change course. As Wulf encourages us, we must reconsider our responses to this animal and reassess its place in the past and future of our natural world. We must rewrite their history – and ours – to reflect the true nature of their presence in the physical and mental landscapes of the British Isles,34 so that the tales of wolves which we tell at this crucial moment in the earth’s history are not monotone dirges based on stereotype, but stories which are as multitoned, vibrant, and loud as the howling of the wolves which roamed the textual and physical landscapes of these shores. Only then may we open a new chapter for this animal in Britain, welcoming the wolf into our story once more.



31



32



33



34

Abi Kay, ‘Defra Rewilding Forum an Idea “Straight from the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party”’, Farmers Guardian, 9 March 2021 [accessed 18 August 2021]. D. B. Hayhow et al., The State of Nature 2019. The State of Nature partnership (2019), p. 9. D. B. Hayhow et al., The State of Nature 2016. The State of Nature partnership (2016), p. 71. Until recently, one of the only histories of the wolf in Britain and Ireland was found in the ninety pages on the animal written by Harting in his above-mentioned British Animals Extinct within Historic Times who, like Skeat, repeats lupine stereotypes and presents them as fact. Thankfully, the small body of literature about wolves in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland is slowing growing, with Dent’s chapter on wolves in his Lost Beasts of Britain; Kieran Hickey’s monograph Wolves in Ireland: A Natural and Cultural History (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011); Paul Williams’ ‘Cultural Impressions of the Wolf, with Specific Reference to the Man-Eating Wolf in England’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sheffield, 2003) and, not least, Pluskowski’s work on wolves in Britain, especially his Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages.

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Bibliography Turville-Petre, Gabriel, ‘Outlawry’, in Sjötíu ritgerðir helgaðar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. júlí 1977, ed. by Einar G. Pétursson and Jónas Kristjánsson (Reykjavik: Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, 1977), pp. 769–78 Tweddle, Dominic, Martin Biddle, and Birthe Kjolbye-Biddle, South-East England, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) Verner, Lisa, The Epistemology of the Monstrous in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 2005) Victor, Benjamin, ‘History of the Text and Scholia’, in A Companion to Terence, ed. by Antony Augoustakis and Ariana Traill (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), pp. 343–62 Vineis, Edoardo, and Alfonso Maierù, ‘Medieval Linguistics’, in History of Linguistics, ed. by Giulio C. Lepschy and Anna Morpurgo Davies, 5 vols (London: Longman, 1994– ), ii: Classical and Medieval Linguistics (1994), pp. 134–346 Wade, Erik, ‘Language, Letters, and Augustinian Origins in the Old English Poetic Solomon and Saturn I’, JEGP, 117 (2018), 160–84 Wade, Jenny, ‘Going Berserk: Battle Trance and Ecstatic Holy Warriors in the European War Magic Tradition’, International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 35 (2016), 21–38 Wallach, Luitpold, Alcuin and Charlemagne: Studies in Carolingian History and Literature, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology, 32 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959) Watson, Robert N., ‘Shadows of the Renaissance’, in The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism, ed. by Greg Garrard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 40–59 Weitenberg, Jos, ‘The Meaning of the Expression “To Become a Wolf” in Hittite’, in Perspectives on Indo-European Language, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Edgar C. Polomé, ed. by Roger Pearson, Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series, 7 and 9, 2 vols (McLean, VA: Institute for the Study of Man, 1991–2), i (1991), pp. 189–98 Wentersdorf, Karl P., ‘Beowulf: The Paganism of Hrothgar’s Danes’, Studies in Philology, 78 (1981), 91–119 Whatley, E. G., ‘Late Old English Hagiography, ca. 950–1150’, in Hagiographies: International History of the Latin and Vernacular Hagiographical Literature in the West from Its Origins to 1550, ed. by Guy Philippart, Corpus Christianorum Texts and Studies, 1–8, 8 vols (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994–2020), ii (1996), pp. 429–99 Whitelock, Dorothy, ‘Fact and Fiction in the Legend of St. Edmund’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, 31 (1969), 217–33 Wickham-Crowley, Kelley M., ‘Fens and Frontiers’, in Water and the Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. by Maren Clegg Hyer and Della Hooke (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017), pp. 68–88 243

Bibliography Wiersma, Stanley Marvin, ‘A Linguistic Analysis of Words Referring to Monsters in Beowulf’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1961) Williams, David, ‘The Exile as Uncreator’, Mosaic, 8 (1975), 1–14 Williams, Paul, ‘Cultural Impressions of the Wolf, with Specific Reference to the Man-Eating Wolf in England’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Sheffield, 2003) Williams, Thomas J. T., ‘“For the Sake of Bravado in the Wilderness”: Confronting the Bestial in Anglo-Saxon Warfare’, in Representing Beasts in Early Medieval England and Scandinavia, ed. by Michael D. J. Bintley and Thomas J. T. Williams, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 29 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2015), pp. 176–204 Wilton, David, ‘What Do We Mean by Anglo-Saxon? Pre-Conquest to the Present’, JEGP, 119 (2020), 425–54 Wood, Ian N., ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, in Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World: The West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, 300–1100, ed. by Walter Pohl, Clemens Gantner, and Richard Payne (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 531–42 Woolf, Rosemary, ‘The Devil in Old English Poetry’, Review of English Studies NS, 4 (1953), 1–12 —— ‘Saints’ Lives’, in Continuations and Beginnings: Studies in Old English Literature, ed. by Eric Gerald Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 37–66 Wormald, Patrick, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999– ), i: Legislation and Its Limits (1999) Wright, Roger, ‘Abbo of Fleury in Ramsey (985–987)’, in Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800–c.1250, ed. by Elizabeth M. Tyler, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 27 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 105–20 Yalden, Derek, The History of British Mammals (London: T & A D Poyser, 1999) Zetzel, James E. G., Critics, Compilers, and Commentators: An Introduction to Roman Philology, 200 BCE–800 CE (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)

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Bibliography Cameron, Angus, et al., eds, Dictionary of Old English: A to I Online (Toronto, ON: Dictionary of Old English Project, 2018) Clark Hall, J. R., ed., A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th edn, with a supplement by Herbert D. Meritt (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1960) Cleasby, Richard, and Gudbrand Vigfusson, eds, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 2nd edn, with a supplement by William A. Craigie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957) Glare, P. G. W., ed., Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Gneuss, Helmut, and Michael Lapidge, eds, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2014) Key to English Place-names (Nottingham: Institute for Name-Studies, University of Nottingham, 2019) Keynes, Simon, et al., eds, The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of AngloSaxon Charters Orchard, Andy, ed., Cassell Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend (London: Cassell, 1997) Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England Riley, H. T., ed., Dictionary of Latin Quotations, Proverbs, Maxims, and Mottos, Classical and Mediæval, Including Law Terms and Phrases (London: Bell & Daldy, 1866)

245

INDEX Abbo of Fleury knowledge of speech-stealing wolf 76 n.97, 77, 78, 82, 83, 139–42 Passio Eadmundi 13, 121–2, 123–30, 131, 132, 133–4, 135–8, 139–40, 141–2, 145–51, 151–3 Adalhard of Corbie 85 Ælfric of Eynsham 8 n.46, 46 n.157 Catholic Homilies 8 n.46, 122 n.5, 142, 143 Dominica II. Post Pasca 135–6, 137, 145 Colloquy 5 knowledge of speech-stealing wolf 78, 82, 139, 140, 142–4 Letter to Sigeweard 30 Lives of Saints 122, 126 n.30, 129 n.57, 142, 143, 151 Passio Eadmundi 13, 43, 121–2, 123, 129, 131–2, 132–3, 134–8, 143–4, 145, 146–51, 151–5, 190 Passio Sancti Albani martyris 26, 33, 101, 132–3, 138 Passio Sanctorum Apostolorum Simonis et Iude 144 Æschere 49, 197–9, 202, 203 n.277 Aesop’s Fables 64–5 Alcuin of York 76–7, 85, 201 n.263 Versus de patribus, regibus, et sanctis Euboricensis ecclesiae (York poem) 76, 78, 79, 80, 82, 85 Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne 8 n.46, 75, 76 n.97, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81 De creatura 104 Ambrose 14, 60, 62–3, 64, 69, 70, 79, 85 De Cain et Abel 172 Expositio de psalmo CXVIII 62, 78–9, 182

Expositio Evangelii secundum Lucan 14, 61–2, 63, 79, 85, 146, 149, 155, 187, 190 Hexameron 56, 60–1, 63, 64, 67, 71–2 n.70, 78, 85, 141, 143, 146, 190, 192, 194, 195 Andreas 12, 27, 46–7, 48, 100, 170 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 92, 130, 166–7 Ars Laureshamensis 56–7 n.10, 71 n.66, 72 Asser, bishop of Sherborne Vita Ælfredi 105 n.109 Atlakviða 84–5 Battle of Brunanburh, The 6 n.32, 7 n.38, 31 n.67, 101–2, 136 n.95 Battle of Maldon, The 6 n.32, 9–10, 27, 100, 101–2, 170 bears 158, 160–1, 163, 170, 176, 177 Beast of Battle topos 2 n.10, 6–7, 10, 17, 25–6, 27, 33, 35, 36 n.94, 101–2, 114, 136, 148, 165, 166, 169 n.80, 210–11 Bede 8 n.46, 74, 75, 76 n.97, 77–8, 79, 80, 81, 143 n.151 Beowulf 6 n.32, 7 n.38, 14–15, 15–16, 21 n.9, 21 n.11, 25–6, 27 n.52, 39, 47–52, 92, 97 n.54, 98 n.60, 105–6, 157–206, 208, 209, 211 Beowulf (character) 157–8, 160, 164, 167–8, 169 n.80, 172, 176, 189, 190–2, 193–4, 196, 197, 199–200, 201, 202, 203 name of 98 n.60, 158, 160, 161, 176–7, 199 as speech-stealer 15, 191 n.218, 192–3, 194–5, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 206, 209, 210–11 wolfishness of 15, 159, 176, 178–81, 182, 193, 195, 203–4, 206, 209

Index berserkers 170–1, 177 n.130, 179, 204 n.278 Bible New Testament 7, 8, 13 n.64, 14, 46–7, 52, 61, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 149 n.173, 150, 152–3, 154, 155, 187, 204 Old Testament 7, 63, 124–5 n.23, 125, 130 n.58, 133–4, 137, 149, 150, 154, 163 wolves in 7–9, 14, 46–7, 49–50, 52, 60, 61, 63, 70, 132, 133–4, 135–6, 137, 152–3, 163, 164, 187, 204 Black Shuck 166–7 Blickling Homily XVI 50–1, 106 n.115, 164, 165, 175, 180 Boethius De consolatione philosophiae 80, 204 Byrhtferth of Ramsey 8 n.46, 76 n.97, 77, 78, 80, 82, 141, 152 n.187

as sheep 7, 8, 46–7, 52, 53, 61, 62, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 150, 182 Christopher, saint 171–2, 182 community attacks on 33, 47, 49, 52, 53, 116, 138, 181 n.157, 183, 184, 191–2, 198, 209 in Beowulf 15, 47–8, 48–9, 51–2, 181, 183–4, 190, 191–2, 195–6, 198, 206, 209 outlawry from 10, 11, 15, 20–1, 22–3, 28–9, 30, 31–3, 35, 36, 37, 42, 45, 48–9, 51–2, 94, 96–7, 104, 105, 110, 112, 114, 115, 172, 181, 182, 183, 184, 205 speech and 14–15, 183–4, 188, 190, 191–2, 195–6, 198, 200 n.260, 206 corpse-plundering (by humans) 10, 25–6, 27, 35–6, 48, 101 see also graverobbing Creation 13, 183–4, 185, 187, 189 n.209, 190, 195, 196, 198 criminals 22, 24, 29–30, 41–5, 104 wolves and 2, 9, 10–11, 19–20, 26, 27–8, 29, 31, 33, 34, 37–8, 44, 46–7, 48–9, 51, 52–4, 55, 86, 132–3, 138, 158, 169, 170, 172, 174–5, 191, 204, 206 see also graverobbing; outlaws cynocephali  171–2

Cain Grendelkin and 47–8, 49 n.171, 172–3, 173–4, 175, 184, 186–7 n.195 outlawry of 21 n.9, 21 n.11, 48, 102, 172, 178–9 n.139, 184 n.181 Cham 173–4, 175, 202 charms 13, 57, 83–5, 87–8 Christ 14, 62, 144, 177 n.130, 182 as lamb 46, 131, 136, 172 n.99 in the passiones Eadmundi 13, 131–2, 135–6, 137–8, 144, 145, 146–7, 149–51, 154–5 as ‘rock’ 61, 63, 146–7, 149, 154–5, 194 as shepherd 14, 46, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 150, 172 n.99 Word of God and 13, 149–51, 153–4, 155 Christ I 12, 46, 50, 53 Christians 37, 128–9 in the passiones Eadmundi 13, 14, 121, 131–2, 133, 134, 135–6, 137, 138, 145–7, 148–51, 153–5, 194, 209 as prey of wolf 7, 13, 46–7, 53, 60, 133, 134, 135–6, 145, 148–9, 152–3, 154–5, 209

Danelaw 38, 40 Danes 71 in The Battle of Maldon 9–10, 27, 100, 101–2, 170 in Beowulf 47, 48–9, 51–2, 158, 162–3, 167, 169 n.80, 181, 183–91, 193, 194, 195, 196–9, 202–3, 204–5, 205–6 in early medieval England 38–9, 92, 130, 168, 170 in the passiones Eadmundi 13, 14, 121, 131, 132–6, 137–8, 139, 144, 145–7, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 192, 194, 208, 209 wolves and 9–10, 13, 14, 27, 100, 101–2, 121, 131, 132–6, 137–8,

248

Index 139, 144, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 170, 204, 206, 208, 209 Daniel 12, 29, 204 deer 3, 110 n.144, 111, 162–3 demons 104, 105, 201 in Blickling Homily XVI 51, 164, 175 Grendelkin as 47, 49, 51, 52, 158, 164, 166, 167, 169, 176, 205, 206 wolves and 7–8, 33 n.80, 44 n.148, 50–1, 164, 169, 176 devil see Satan dogs 4, 5, 7, 91, 95, 100, 112, 121, 164–5 Donatus, Aelius Ars major 56 n.10, 68, 69, 76 n.97, 140 Commentum Terentii 56, 64–5, 66, 67, 69, 70 n.62, 75, 79–80, 140 lost commentary on Virgil 65, 66, 71 n.69, 74 Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury 121 n.4, 123, 124, 130, 139, 149 n.175

Exeter Book 89, 107 n.124 Exeter Book riddles 7 n.38, 27–8, 44, 104 Wulf and Eadwacer and 89–90, 94, 100, 117, 208 exile 20–1, 102, 104, 110 n.145, 114, 116, 149–50 n.177, 178, 181 n.157, 186 see also outlaws; outlawry Exodus 6 n.32, 7 n.38, 27, 39, 48, 51, 165 n.49, 169–70, 204, 210–11 Fall of Man 49, 149–50 n.177, 183 n.171 fenland 48, 93, 96, 102–7, 108, 111, 166, 167, 175 Fenrir 105, 106, 167–8, 175 Fleury Abbey 73–4, 77, 79 n.134, 121 n.4, 126, 140–1 gallows 27, 28, 42–3, 44, 138 n.107 see also hanging Genesis A 6 n.32, 27, 48, 51, 102, 165 n.49, 169–70, 177, 185, 189–90 God 104, 126, 134, 135, 154, 172, 183 in Beowulf 15, 48, 49, 51–2, 105, 174, 182, 183, 184, 186–7, 188, 189–90, 193–4, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200–2, 204, 205–6, 209 outlawry from 21, 26, 29, 33, 42, 45–6, 47, 48, 49, 51–2, 53, 105, 133 n.71, 138, 149–50 n.177, 170, 172, 186–7, 190, 198, 204, 205–6 in the passiones Eadmundi 13, 14, 121, 131, 132, 134, 137, 138, 148–9, 153, 154, 190, 209 speech and 13–14, 15, 61–2, 88, 125, 138, 148–9, 183, 190, 200–1, 204, 205, 206, 210 see also Word of God graverobbing 9, 10, 11, 19–20, 22–3, 24–5, 26, 33, 35–6, 138, 185 see also corpse-plundering (by humans) Grendelkin 157, 160–1, 180–1, 196, 201, 211 as outlaws 15, 21 n.9, 21 n.11, 47–9, 51–2, 97 n.54, 105–6, 158, 169, 172, 173–4, 177–8, 179, 182,

East Anglia 13, 105, 121, 125, 125–6 n.26, 127–8, 129, 130–1, 133, 135, 149–50 n.177, 153, 166–7 Edmund, king and saint 13, 105, 121, 123, 125, 126, 130, 145, 150–1, 154, 194 cult of 128–30, 139 head of 13, 14, 121, 122, 124, 124–5 n.23, 126, 136, 137–8, 144–5, 148, 149–50, 151 n.183, 152, 153, 154, 155, 198–9, 209 historical figure 122, 127–8, 130, 139 as sheep 131, 135, 136, 137, 144 as shepherd 13, 131–2, 134 n.74, 135, 136, 137, 138, 142, 145, 150, 186, 193 subjects of 13, 121, 125, 129, 131–2, 133, 134, 135–6, 137, 138, 144, 145, 146 n.164, 149–51, 153–4, 155, 186, 198–9, 209 voice of 13, 14, 121, 136, 138, 145–7, 148–9, 150, 151 n.183, 153–4, 155, 192, 209

249

Index 183, 184, 186, 187, 191, 204 n.278, 205, 206 as speech-stealers 15, 159, 167, 183, 184–5, 187, 189–90, 191, 192, 193, 194–5, 197–200, 202–3, 204, 206, 209 as weargas 47–52, 158, 169, 170, 180, 186, 187, 191, 200, 203 wolfishness of 15, 47, 48–9, 50, 51, 52, 157–8, 159, 161–4, 165–6, 167–9, 169–71, 172, 174–6, 177 n.130, 179–80, 182, 183, 185, 187, 195, 197, 199–200, 202, 206, 208, 209 Grendel-mere 50–1, 162, 164, 165, 166, 174 Guðrúnarkviða II 35

n.150, 118, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 148–9, 164, 175, 181, 195, 200 Jerome 64, 69 n.61, 70 n.62, 71–2 n.70, 73 commentary on Habakkuk 63, 67, 79, 143, 149, 202 Judgement Day 14 n.67, 33, 136, 138, 186 Julian of Toledo Ars grammatica 69, 70, 75, 80 laws English 22, 32, 39, 41 n.124, 45 n.155 of Æthelstan 20 n.4, 108 n.133 of Alfred the Great 108 n.133 Cnut’s Winchester Code I (Wulfstan) 52–3, 116, 150 n.178, 171, 179 n.145 of Ine 20 n.4, 29–30 Leges Edwardi Confessoris 28–9 Leges Henrici Primi 24–5 Walreaf 24, 25, 29 Frankish 10, 16, 19 Lex Ribuaria 23, 24 Lex Salica 23, 30 n.65 Lex Salica emendata 23–4 Pactus legis Salicae 22, 23 Hittite 23 n.24 Scandinavian 24 n.34 Grágás 37, 171 n.88, 172 n.100 Tryggðamál 37–8 Logos see Word of God lupus in fabula proverb 57 n.11, 66, 107, 144 speech-stealing wolf superstition and 12, 56, 64–5, 65–6, 67–8, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73 transmission of 12–13, 56, 64–5, 65–6, 67–8, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76 n.97, 85 see also speech-stealing wolf superstition lycanthropes see werewolves Lycaon 86

hanging 42–3, 45 n.152, 53, 138 n.107 see also gallows Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar 34–5 Helgakviða Hundingsbana I 35, 36, 166 Helgakviða Hundingsbana II 35–6 hell 14, 33, 164–5, 190, 191, 195, 196 in Beowulf 50, 51, 165, 185–6, 187 n.201, 188 in Blickling Homily XVI 50–1, 164, 165 hellhounds 164–5 Hrabanus Maurus De universo 69–70, 80 Hrothgar 49, 162–3, 183, 186–7, 188, 189, 190–1, 193, 196, 198, 203–5 human-animal boundary 10, 11–12, 15, 27, 52, 55, 88, 94, 97–8, 101–2, 107, 117, 169, 176, 179, 181, 206, 208–9 humanity 208 outlawry from 10–11, 15 n.76, 19, 20, 26, 27–9, 31–3, 37–8, 45, 46–7, 48, 49, 52, 53, 86, 88, 104, 105, 116, 170, 172, 191, 204 speech and 11–12, 13–14, 15, 55, 86, 87–8, 112, 184 Irish Reference Bible 173–5, 202 n.269 Isidore of Seville Etymologiae 56, 66–70, 71, 72, 73, 74–5, 81–3, 87 n.188, 92, 111

250

Index Maxims I outlaws in 15, 31–3, 102, 107, 115, 182 speech in 15, 188–9, 196 wolves in 6 n.32, 15, 25, 31–3, 82–3, 102, 107, 111, 115, 136–7, 182 Maxims II 31, 43, 45, 104, 163 n.36, 166 wolves in 30, 103, 114 Mermedonians 27, 46–7, 48, 100, 170 Murethach In Donati artem maiorem 70–1, 72–3, 140

wolves and 9, 10–11, 12, 15, 19–20, 23, 26, 27–9, 30, 31–3, 34, 35–8, 40–1, 44, 45–7, 48–9, 51–2, 53–4, 55, 87, 90, 93–4, 96–7, 99, 100, 102–3, 105, 107, 108–11, 112, 113–14, 115, 116–19, 133, 138, 153, 158, 169, 170, 172, 181–2, 183, 191, 204, 205–6, 208–9 woodland and 29–30, 31, 35–6, 40, 102–3, 115, 133 n.71, 178 see also exile; outlawry Ovid Metamorphoses 86

Nebuchadnezzar 29, 204

passiones Eadmundi 1, 13–14, 15–16, 43, 83, 105, 121–55, 182, 186, 190, 192, 193, 194, 198–9, 206, 208, 209 see also Abbo of Fleury; Ælfric of Eynsham Plato Republic 57–8 Plautus Asinaria 19 Stichus 56 n.10 Pliny 63, 73 Naturalis historia 1, 56, 59–60, 62, 66, 67, 69, 70 n.62, 71, 75, 77–8, 84, 86 n.186, 140–1

Odin 164, 191 n.218 Old English Martyrology 46 n.157, 171–2 outlawry from community 10, 11, 15, 20–1, 22–3, 28–9, 30, 31–3, 35, 36, 37, 42, 45, 48–9, 51–2, 94, 96–7, 104, 105, 110, 112, 114, 115, 172, 181, 182, 183, 184, 205 in early medieval England 20 n.4, 22, 39, 45 n.155, 108 n.133 from God 21, 26, 29, 33, 42, 45–6, 47, 48, 49, 51–2, 53, 105, 133 n.71, 138, 149–50 n.177, 170, 172, 186–7, 190, 198, 204, 205–6 for graverobbing 10, 19–20, 22–3, 24–5, 26, 33, 138 from humanity 10–11, 15 n.76, 19, 20, 26, 27–9, 31–3, 37–8, 45, 46–7, 48, 49, 52, 53, 86, 88, 104, 105, 116, 170, 172, 191, 204 speech and 14–15, 86, 88, 112, 117–19, 182, 183, 184, 190, 206 see also exile; outlaws outlaws 20–2, 24–5, 39 fenland and 48, 96, 102–3, 104–5, 105–6, 107, 108 Satan and 46, 47, 53, 133 n.71, 138, 177, 206 werewolves and 15 n.76, 21 n.12, 31, 36, 52–3, 86, 114 n.174, 116, 177–9 as ‘wolf-heads’ 27–8, 29, 31, 109, 205

Ramsey Abbey 76, 121, 140, 141, 151 n.186 ravens 6–7, 17, 25, 35, 101, 165, 166 Remigius of Auxerre commentary on Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae 73, 77, 80, 82 Commentum Einsidlense in Donati barbarismum 72–3 riddles see Exeter Book riddles Romulus and Remus 64–5, 127 n.41 rustici 66–7, 67, 68–9, 70–1, 72, 73–4, 85–6, 144 Satan 189–90 in Beowulf 49–50, 51–2, 164, 167, 171, 182, 189 n.209, 190, 192, 194, 196, 201–2, 203, 205, 206, 209

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Index Sigrdrífumál 37, 114, 172 n.100 Snorri Sturluson Gylfaginning 167–8 society see community Solinus 73 Collectanea rerum memorabilium 60, 67, 69, 75, 78, 140 Solomon and Saturn I 13–14, 201 speech 188–9, 198 community and 14–15, 183–4, 188, 190, 191–2, 195–6, 198, 200 n.260, 206 God and 13–14, 15, 61–2, 88, 125, 138, 148–9, 183, 190, 200–1, 204, 205, 206, 210 humanity and 11–12, 13–14, 15, 55, 86, 87–8, 112, 184 outlawry and 14–15, 86, 88, 112, 117–19, 182, 183, 184, 190, 206 speech-stealing wolf superstition 12, 55–6 Beast of Battle topos and 210–11 in Beowulf 15, 159, 167, 181 n.157, 183–205, 206 in early medieval England 12–13, 57, 74–83, 83–5, 87–8, 140–4, 159, 209–10 in early medieval Ireland 71–2, 74–5 lupus in fabula proverb and 12, 56, 64–5, 65–6, 67–8, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73 in Old Norse tradition 84–5 origin of 15 n.76, 68, 86–7 outlawry and 15, 88, 117–19, 183, 184, 190, 206 in the passiones Eadmundi 13, 14, 83, 121, 138–44, 145–51, 151–5, 194, 209 transmission of 12–13, 15–16, 56–7, 57–74, 74–83, 85–6, 87–8, 140–4, 159, 209–10 werewolves and 15 n.76, 58–9, 86–7 Word of God and 13–14, 61–2, 63, 146, 149, 153–5, 184–5, 190, 206, 210 in Wulf and Eadwacer 117–19 see also lupus in fabula proverb Sutton Hoo 127–8

as outlaw from God 21 n.11, 45–6, 49, 51 n.181, 52, 53 outlaws and 46, 47, 53, 133 n.71, 138, 177, 206 in the passiones Eadmundi 13, 14, 131, 132–3, 134, 135, 137 n.101, 150, 153, 154 speech-stealing and 12, 14, 56, 60–1, 85, 145, 149, 150, 153, 155, 185, 186, 187, 190, 192, 194, 203, 206, 209 werewolves and 52, 171 wolves and 7, 9, 14, 44 n.148, 45–6, 46–7, 49–50, 51–2, 53, 60–1, 87, 90, 131, 132, 134, 135, 145, 152–3, 155, 164, 167, 172 n.99, 186, 187, 204, 206, 209, 211 Scholia Bernensia 73–4 Sedulius Scottus In Donati artem maiorem 71–2, 73, 74, 75–6, 85 Servius 73 In Vergilii carmen commentarii 56–7 n.10, 65–6, 67, 71, 74, 75, 80, 141 sheep 126, 163 Christ as 46, 131, 136, 172 n.99 Christians as 7, 8, 46–7, 52, 53, 61, 62, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 150, 182 in early medieval England 3, 4–5, 8, 87 wolves disguised as 7 n.44, 8, 33, 52, 152–3 wolves preying on 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 31, 111–12 n.153 shepherd(s) 7, 52, 116 in Beowulf 186, 187 in the Bible 7 n.44, 8, 46, 135, 150, 172 n.99 Christ as 14, 46, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 138, 150, 172 n.99, 186 in early medieval England 5, 33 in the passiones Eadmundi 13, 131, 132, 134 n.74, 135, 136, 137, 138, 142, 145, 150, 186 speech-stealing wolf and 71, 73, 74 Sigmund 36, 114 n.174, 157, 158, 176–9, 203–4

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Index Terence 71–2 n.70 Adelphi 56–7 n.10, 76 n.97 Theocritus Idylls 58, 59, 64–5, 76 thieves see criminals

159, 161, 162, 164, 165, 169, 180, 207–8 in Beowulf 15, 47–52, 105–6, 158–9, 161–4, 165–6, 167–71, 172, 174–6, 177 n.130, 178–9, 180–1, 182–3, 184–6, 187, 191, 193, 194–5, 197, 199–200, 202–3, 204, 205–6, 208, 209 in the Bible 7–9, 14, 46–7, 49–50, 52, 60, 61, 63, 70, 132, 133–4, 135–6, 137, 152–3, 163, 164, 187, 204 corpse-plundering and 9, 10, 11, 19–20, 25–6, 33, 35–6, 138, 185 criminals and 2, 9, 10–11, 19–20, 26, 27–8, 29, 31, 33, 34, 37–8, 44, 46–7, 48–9, 51, 52–4, 55, 86, 132–3, 138, 158, 169, 170, 172, 174–5, 191, 204, 206 Danes and 9–10, 13, 14, 27, 100, 101–2, 121, 131, 132–6, 137–8, 139, 144, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 170, 204, 206, 208, 209 demons and 7–8, 33 n.80, 44 n.148, 50–1, 164, 169, 176 in early medieval England 2–4, 5–7, 8, 9, 16–18, 31, 33, 87, 93, 106, 111–12 n.153, 113–14, 127–8, 152, 161, 163, 207–8, 211, 212–13 eating humans 6, 10, 17, 25–6, 27, 32–3, 35–6, 101–2, 136–7, 147–8, 165–6, 173, 185–6, 210 fenland and 93, 96, 102–3, 105–7, 111, 166–7, 175 human relationship with 1–3, 4, 5–6, 16, 17–18, 55, 87–8, 161, 206, 207–8, 211–12 in the Old Norse tradition 9, 11, 34–6, 37, 105, 114 n.174, 164–5, 167–8, 170, 172 n.100, 176–8 outlaws and 9, 10–11, 12, 15, 19–20, 23, 26, 27–9, 30, 31–3, 34, 35–8, 40–1, 44, 45–7, 48–9, 51–2, 53–4, 55, 87, 90, 93–4, 96–7, 99, 100, 102–3, 105, 107, 108–11, 112, 113–14, 115, 116–19, 133, 138, 153, 158, 169, 170, 172, 181–2, 183, 191, 204, 205–6, 208–9

ulfheðnar 9, 170–1, 177 n.130, 179 Unferth 191–3, 195, 200 vargdropi 37, 107, 114, 172 n.100 vargr 10–11, 19–20, 23, 24 n.34, 34–8, 40–1, 53, 54, 114, 178–9 n.139, 182 n.161 Vikings see Danes Virgil 60, 67, 69, 73, 74 Eclogues 58–9, 60, 62, 63, 64–5, 76–7, 80, 86–7, 140, 141, 142 Vǫlsunga saga 36, 114 n.174, 158, 176–9 wargus 10, 19, 20, 22–5, 26, 30 n.65, 34, 42, 44 wearg 11, 20, 21–2, 38–53, 53–4, 175, 180 in Beowulf 47–52, 158, 169, 170, 181–2, 186, 187, 191, 200, 203 in the passiones Eadmundi 43, 138 in Wulf and Eadwacer 107 werewolves 173–5 in Cnut’s Winchester Code I (Wulfstan) 52–3, 116, 150 n.178, 171, 179 n.145 outlaws and 15 n.76, 21 n.12, 31, 36, 52–3, 86, 114 n.174, 116, 177–9 speech-stealing wolf superstition and 15 n.76, 58–9, 86–7 in the Vǫlsunga saga 36, 114 n.174, 158, 176–9, 203–4 wolf-pits 4, 33, 110, 111 wolves as Beast of Battle 6–7, 10, 17, 25, 27, 33, 35, 36 n.94, 101–2, 114, 136, 148, 165, 169 n.80, 210–11 behaviour of 3, 4, 5–7, 8, 16–18, 19, 26, 31, 36, 87, 93, 96, 97, 100, 102, 106, 111, 113, 115, 133, 138,

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Index in the passiones Eadmundi 13, 14, 105, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127–8, 130–1, 132–7, 137–8, 138–9, 141, 143–4, 144–9, 150 n.178, 151–3, 154–5, 182, 193, 199, 208, 209 in personal names 9, 10, 11, 38, 58, 91–2, 95, 98 n.60, 116, 158, 159, 176–7, 179 n.145, 182 n.161 in place-names 3–4, 5, 17, 42–3 n.143, 106, 110 n.144, 113–14, 175 Satan and 7, 9, 14, 44 n.148, 45–6, 46–7, 49–50, 51–2, 53, 60–1, 87, 90, 131, 132, 134, 135, 145, 152–3, 155, 164, 167, 172 n.99, 186, 187, 204, 206, 209, 211 as speech-stealers 12, 13, 14, 15, 55–6, 57–74, 83–5, 86–8, 107, 117–19, 121, 144–7, 148–9, 151–2, 153, 154–5, 167, 183, 184–5, 186, 194–5, 197–8, 199–200, 202–3, 206, 209, 210–11 as tame 2 n.10, 8, 13, 14, 121, 125, 126, 128, 136–7, 147–9, 152, 153, 182, 199, 206 warriors and 2 n.10, 6 n.32, 9–10, 25–6, 27, 35, 46, 48, 51, 98, 100, 101–2, 109 n.139, 127–8, 169–71, 177 n.130, 210 woodland and 3, 30–1, 35–6, 40, 102–3, 111 n.149, 114, 115, 133, 178 in Wulf and Eadwacer 11, 90, 91, 92–4, 95, 96–9, 100–3, 107, 108–19, 205, 208–9, 213 see also werewolves

woodland in early medieval England 3, 30, 103, 104 outlaws and 29–30, 31, 35–6, 40, 102–3, 115, 133 n.71, 178 wolves and 3, 30–1, 35–6, 40, 102–3, 111 n.149, 114, 115, 133, 178 Word of God in Beowulf 183, 184–5, 189–90, 196, 198, 201–2, 204, 205, 206 in the passiones Eadmundi 125, 137–8, 146, 149–51, 153–5, 209 speech-stealing wolf superstition and 13–14, 61–2, 63, 146, 149, 153–5, 184–5, 190, 206, 210 Wuffings 9, 105, 127–8, 130–1 Wulf and Eadwacer 11, 15–16, 21 n.9, 89–119, 160, 166, 169, 205, 206, 208–9 hwelp 89, 91, 93 n.35, 95–6, 96–7, 104, 107, 111–12, 113–15, 116, 117, 118 speaker 11, 91, 93 n.35, 94, 95–6, 96–7, 99–100, 104, 105, 107, 108–13, 116–17, 118–19, 208–9 people of 11, 94–5, 98–102, 104, 105, 107, 109–10, 111, 114–15, 116–17, 119 n.204, 206, 208 Wulf 11, 91–3, 94–101, 102–3, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108–10, 111–12, 113, 115 n.179, 116–17, 118–19, 206, 208–9 Wulfstan, archbishop of York 45 n.155, 80 Cnut’s Winchester Code I 52–3, 116, 150 n.178, 171, 179 n.145 Sermo Lupi ad Anglos 9

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