3i8 Beozvulf and Widsith 



between the seas/ best of all the race of men upon the earth. 

 Therefore Offa, bold with the spear,^ was honored far and wide 

 for his gifts and his warfare. Wisely he ruled his native land.' 



But with what propriety, it may be asked, could a member of 

 the royal family of Northumbria be designated as Offa, seeing 

 that the ancient Ofifa was appropriated as an ancestor by the Mer- 

 cian dynasty ? Because, for one thing, the lines between the two 

 branches of the Anglian house were not so sharply drawn as has 

 sometimes been assumed. An uncle of Aldfrith's, banished with 

 all his brothers, had been named Offa; and a son of Aldfrith's, 

 who came to a sad end, bore the same name.^ It may therefore 



^ Here perhaps with allusion to the Northumbrian realm, between the 

 North and the Irish Sea. Elsewhere it is appHed in Beozvulf to Hrothgar's 

 kingdom, perhaps also conceived as Northumbria, or, by extension, England : 

 858(?), 1297, 1685. The authors of Guthlac and Exodus imitate Beozvulf. 

 Of the two occurrences in Guthlac, one specifically designates England 

 (1333) '■ 'the best between the two seas that we in England have ever 

 heard of.' The other (237) seems generalized to include the world, as 

 perhaps also in Beozv. 858. In Ps. 72. 8 (cf. Zech. 9. 10), we doubtless 

 have the ultimate original (cf. the Old English poetical version), there, too, 

 the original limitation — in this case to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean — 

 being extended by the poet's idealizing vision, while it is still limited in 

 Exod. 442, 562. Psalm 72 being associated in the superscription with 

 Solomon, an allusion to Aldfrith would be particularly happy; see above, 

 p. 293. In a wide sense, the author of Beozvulf might be conceived as 

 preluding Shakespeare's (Rich. II. 2. i) 



This precious stone set in the silver sea, 



Which serves it in the office of a wall, 



Or as a moat defensive to a house, 

 and Tennyson's (To the Queen) 



And compassed by the inviolate sea. 

 ^Compare Henry of Huntingdon's 'strenuus in bellis' (above, p. 306). 

 "For both these see Diet. Chr. Biog. 4. 67. Here the name supposed to 

 be peculiarly Mercian is found in two successive generations in the North- 

 umbrian line ; but conversely, as Aldfrith had a brother, Ecgf rith, and a 

 sister, riffled, so, about a century later, two children of the Mercian Offa 

 (see above, p. 315) bore these names — Ecgfrith (-ferth) reigning 785 (?)- 

 796, and .(Elffled being from 792 to 796 wife of King yEthelred of Northum- 

 bria (cf. Oman, pp. 348-9). 



The fate of Offa, Aldfrith's son, was bound up with the fortunes of 

 Cynewulf, Bishop of Lindisfarne, whom various scholars of repute — Carleton 

 Brown being the latest — have identified with the poet of that name. See 

 Diet. Nat. Biog. 16. 304; my edition of the Christ, p. Ixxii; and my edition 

 of the Elenc, Pha'uix, and Fhysiologus, p. xiii, note 3. 



