{"id":378,"date":"2019-07-09T22:14:38","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T12:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/?p=378"},"modified":"2019-07-09T22:18:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T12:18:28","slug":"beowulf-ll-3074-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/2019\/07\/09\/beowulf-ll-3074-f\/","title":{"rendered":"Beowulf ll 3074 f"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In continuing the Beowulf translation I came to ll. 3074f which are described as a\u00a0<em>locus desperatus<\/em>\u00a0in Klaeber in a long note (pp. 266 f.) There is no agreed upon solution to the problems of the text &#8211; which do not seem to be errors in transcription or copying, but in divining the sense of the poet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The first problem is the sense of the word <em>goldhw\u00e6te<\/em> which occurs only in this poem. This seems to be largely solved now: other known compounds with \u2013<em>hw\u00e6t<\/em> (see Wrenn\u2019s glossary <em>s.v.<\/em>) indicate that \u2018rich in gold\u2019 or \u2018abounding in gold\u2019 is the intended sense. The earlier suggestion of enchantment is apparently now definitively dismissed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">There\u2019s also the question of to whom the adjective applies. It may be referring back to the general hero of the passage, Beowulf, or to <em>se secg<\/em> on line 3071. If it refers to Beowulf, then the obvious sense of the passage is the implausible claim that Beowulf at this time was not rich in gold \u2013 and it takes a fair bit of force to get it to say something else. I think it\u2019s easier to say that the passage continues the description of the curse on the hoard and that the person in question is the hypothetical robber (rather than the actual one.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">My own solution, which I have not seen elsewhere, is to consider the first half of the line 3074 to be grammatically separate from the remainder. I take <em>gearwor<\/em> to be a comparative in a consecutive phrase and read this as being contrastive with the condition that <em>se secg<\/em> might be a relatively poor man, and explicative of why he would attempt to take the treasure. As far as I can tell, this is grammatically possible, does not rely upon unattested meanings for\u00a0<em>goldhw\u00e6te\u00a0<\/em>or <em>est<\/em> and makes sense in the context of the poem at that point. So:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>N\u00e6s he goldhw\u00e6te gearwor h\u00e6fde<br \/>\n<\/em>Not gold-gifted was he: the more greedily he had\u00a0<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> <em>Agendes est \u00e6r gesceawod.<br \/>\n<\/em>the goods of the owner earlier gazed on.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In continuing the Beowulf translation I came to ll. 3074f which are described as a\u00a0locus desperatus\u00a0in Klaeber in a long note (pp. 266 f.) There is no agreed upon solution to the problems of the text &#8211; which do not seem to be errors in transcription or copying, but in divining the sense of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-translations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevewatson.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}