332 Bcoivulf and Widsith 



Such a cavern, it will be seen, corresponds pretty closely to the 

 scene of the contest between Beowulf and Grendel's dam'- 

 (1512-8, tr. Clark Hall) : 'Then the chief perceived that he was 

 in some unfriendly hall or other, where no water harmed him in 

 any way. nor might the sudden rush of the flood touch him, by 

 reason of the vaulted chamber ; — a fiery light he saw, a pallid 

 flame, shine brightly.' 



There are difficulties about visualizing' the locality of this adven- 

 ture, but, on the w^hole. they are not insuperable, if only the water 

 in question is regarded throughout as the ocean, and the mere^ 

 of 1362 is so interpreted; the chief obstacles to thus regarding it 

 lie in the fact that Grendel and his mother are supposed to haunt 

 the moors (103, 162, 710, 1348, 1405), and that the sea-wall seems 

 to be traversed by savage fen-paths (1359).^ That the stag 

 declines to plunge over the cliff into the ocean need occasion no 

 surprise (1368). A similar inconsistency with respect to Gren- 

 del's haunts occurs at 851 {fenfreoSo),^ in a passage (844 ft".) to 



^ Cf. Brooke, p. 44, note ; Clark Hall, Bcozvnlf, p. 164. About 8 miles 

 nearly due W. of the extremity of Flamborough Head is the village of 

 Grindale, the 'Grendele' of Domesday Book (cf. Chambers, Bcoiviilf, 1921, 

 p. 308). 



^ Over it, we are told, 'hang groves of hoary whiteness ; a forest with 

 fixed roots bendeth over the waters' (1363-4) ; but that this does not 

 suggest a lake or pool is indicated by the parallel passage (1414-6), where 

 it is mountain-trees (fyrgoibcamas) that overhang the gray rock, just as 

 it is a mountain-stream which goes down (1358-60) under the mists of the 

 cliffs (for such cliff-streams on the Yorkshire coast, see White, pp. 74, 94, 

 131, ^37)- No such eyebrows to the ocean-cliffs, like the 'woods that wave 

 o'er Delphi's steep,' are now to be found at Flamborough Head ; rather, 

 according to White (p. 73), the region is 'bleak and bare in aspect, rolling 

 away to the distant wolds' ; but it is, I presume, conceivable that there 

 may have been trees on the cliffs 1200 years ago. 



^ The Anglo-Saxon mind seems to have been prone to associate fens with 

 moors; thus Alfred (Bocthiiis, ed. Sedgefield, 42. 6) translates pahidcs by 

 'eall ]>set his fennas and moras genumen habbaS,' presumably because of a 

 common barrenness. There is no lack of moors within easy reach of Drif- 

 field or Flamborough ; see Murray, pp. xlv ff., and his map. The wolds, 

 too, superficially resemble the moors (Encyc. Brit., nth ed., 28. 931). 



* Here Grendel's fen-lair seems to be in the nickers' mere (845). For a 

 similar confusion see Virgil, .Icn. 6. 296-7, of which Conington says : 

 'Acheron has here the Platonic characteristics [Phcrdo 112, 113] of a marshy 

 slough, combined with those of a rapid river'; he also remarks (Vol. i, p. 

 22) on the confused scenery of the first Hcloiiuc (cf., for example, 1. 47 



