320 Bcoii'ulf and Widsith 



Twice, at moments of jubilation over Beowulf's prowess, it is 

 said of Hrothgar, with the unanimous consent of his own people 

 and of Beowulf's retainers, 'He was a good king!' 'He was one 

 king!' 



Now, how was it in these respects with Aldf rith ? At the begin- 

 ning of the eighth century he might be called old, or at least elderly. 

 We have learned of his wisdom, his martial vigor, his liberality in 

 reward, his urbanity, his composition of a series of moral, reflec- 

 tive sentiments, his skill in versification, and his interest in the 

 world which lay outside of Britain. His sensibility may be 

 argued from his interest in poetry,^ and the love for the Irish 

 people displayed in his verse, and manifested in deeds at the 

 instance of Adamnan ; but it may also be in some measure 

 inferred from the heartiness with which he made common cause 

 with his people in their resistance to what he and they regarded 

 as the encroachments of Roman power, and not less by his linger- 

 ing regrets at leaving English soil, even for study in Ireland, if 

 Bede is faithful to the monarch's sentiments in rendering them^ 

 by a line adapted from the first Eclogue of Virgil : 



I from my fatherland, 

 My fatherland and pastures ever dear, 

 To exile fly. 



Hrothgar's warnings (1724-68) to Beowulf, in the lengthy dis- 

 course addressed to the hero after the slaying of Grendel's dam, 

 have often been stigmatized as dull, and as delivered in a stereotyped 

 homiletical fashion.^ They gain in interest, however, if we believe 

 them to have grown out of the historic experiences of Aldfrith. 

 In that case, the person at whom the lying's censure is leveled can 



had perforce to remain unsatisfied' [calm, at rest]. For the bursting into 

 tears, see Od. 8. 83 ff., 521 ff. ; for the recounting of valiant deeds in song, 

 II- 9- 189, 520; Od. 8. 72,. 



^ Aldf rith's poem, it must be admitted, is inferior in its feeling for nature, 

 and its lyrical beauty in general, to the two attributed to Columba and 

 Deirdre, as printed by Joyce (2. 503-5). 



' Bede, Vita Mctr. Ciidb. 21. 47-8 : 



Nam patriae fines et dulcia liquerct arva, 

 Scdulus ut Domini mystcria disceret cxul. 



''Cf., for example, Brandl, p. 62. A knowledge of the Bible, which might 

 well be Aldfrithian, is betrayed in 1743 ff. (Eph. 6. 16; see Chr. 763 ff., 779 

 ff., and my notes). 



