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ABSTRACT
In this article, I will reconsider the function and meaning of three connected instances of the word fyren, 879a, 915b, and 1744b. Each occurs in a passage in which a character offers Beowulf advice by comparing him to either Sigemund or Heremod. In each case, the passage establishes a highly complex network of allusions which illuminates Beowulf’s present and his future. In each, I argue, it is possible to read fyren as a pun which foreshadows his fiery end. Intriguingly, the advice offered to Beowulf proves irrelevant, as the foreshadowing indicates. So, why is so much space dedicated to it? I suggest the answer to the question has a profound bearing on how we read the significance of the poem’s tragic ending.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 All quotations from Beowulf or The Fight at Finnsburg are from R. D. Fulk, Klæber's Beowulf. All translations are my own.
2 Griffith, 22.
3 Ibid.
4 For a short but instructive analysis of the implications of the relationship between Sigemund and Fitela for the wider narrative, see Harris, “Beowulf 881a,” 217–8.
5 Orchard, 107.
6 Ibid., 113.
7 Griffith, 23.
8 Many translators chose a more neutral term such as “deeds”. However, as Griffith points out, the word “has a strongly pejorative meaning in Old English” and that to avoid it in relation to Sigemund is to “euphemize”. See: Griffith, “Some Difficulties,” 20.
9 Orchard, 113.
10 Gwara, 59.
11 Ibid., 210.
12 Orchard, 161.
13 Cavill, 20.
14 Kaske, 433.
15 Marshall, 19.
16 For example, the “fyrenum toðum” (CH 1.8) of Aelfric’s dragon, or the “byrnendum toðum” of the wyrmas in Napier 29, 139, lines 10–11; Clemoes, Aelfric's Catholic Homilies, 248, line 188.
17 Kaske, 490.
18 Ibid., 491.
19 Orchard, 105.
20 Sisam, 4, n. 2.
21 John Miles Foley, “Memory in Oral Tradition” in Performing the Gospel, 88.
22 As Byock has noted, “earlier sources yield some evidence that Sigurd may not originally have been the Volsung who slew the dragon”. Byock, 21
23 Orchard, 105.
24 Fulk, xvi.
25 Byock, 21.
26 Jack, 78.
27 O’Donoghue, 18.
28 Harris, 217–8.
29 For a fuller discussion of Beowulf’s preference for defensive over aggressive war-gear see: Sebo, 638–49.
30 Sisam, 4, n. 2.
31 Orchard, 105.
32 Waugh, 346.