The East Riding and Beozuulf 329 



the panorama of the poem. Any one who will be at the trouble to 

 look up the words^ beorg, clif {bri^n-, eg-, holm-, stan-, zveall-), 

 hli<5 {fen-, mist-, nces-, stan-, zvulf-), nas (s^-), and weall, with 

 their compounds, can easily convince himself how numerous they 

 are, and, for the picturesqueness of the poem, how important. 

 The 'windy walls' and 'windy headlands' of Beozvulf (572, 1224, 

 1358) are as striking as the 'windy Troy' of the Iliad, or the 

 'windy heights' where the Cyclops lived- (Od. 9. 400; cf. 16. 365). 

 'Light came from the East, the bright beacon of God,' says Beo- 

 wulf of the morning after his contest in swimming; 'the waves 

 were stilled, and I could descry the sea-headlands, those wind- 

 swept walls.' And again, when the eager adventurers were 

 pressing on in their foamy-necked bark toward the home of 

 Hrothgar, at length, on the second day, 'the sailors saw land, 

 gleaming cliffs and lofty hills, broad ocean-headlands.' 

 When Shakespeare {K. Lear 4. i. 76-7) tells us 



There is a cliff, whose high and bending head 

 Looks fearfully in the confined deep, 



or again (4. 6. 20-22), 



The murmuring surge, 

 That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, 

 Cannot be heard so high,^ 



we may be surprised to learn that the Shakespeare Cliff at Dover 

 is only 350 feet high. All the more shall we appreciate the cliff- 

 scenery of the Yorkshire coast. For mere height, the Shake- 

 speare Cliff bears no comparison with the Peak at Boulby, which, 

 according to Phillips, the best of authorities, is not only one of a 

 group which he calls 'stupendously abrupt,' but is 'the loftiest of 

 all the precipices which guard the English coast (660 ft.).'* 

 Among cliffs of lesser height is one N. W. of Flamborough (436), 

 and, just beyond this, another of 382 feet; one a short distance 

 S. E. of Boulby Peak (497), Kettleness (375), Huntcliff Nab 



^ Which can be conveniently done by the help of my Concordance to 

 BeoztmJf. 



^ See below, p. 340. 



^ Cf . Drayton, Poly-Olbion 28. 321, on Scarborough. 



* P. 140 ; Murray, p. 224. Beachy Head, in Sussex, is 575 ft. high. 

 According to Haigh (Anglo-Saxon Sagas, p. 85), Boulby (contracted from 

 'Beowulfes beorh,' Beoiv. 2807)= Hronesness (Beozv. 2805, 3136). 



