of taste and other causes that occurred in the course of time, the
Beowulf story developed into the form in which it is found in the Bjarki
story in the _Hrólfssaga_.[13]

Thomas Arnold concedes that there may be a faint connection between the
Bjarki story and the Beowulf story, but he rejects Sarrazin's theory
that the Anglo-Saxon poem is a translation from the Scandinavian (see p.
8).[14]

B. Symons takes the story of Bjarki's fight with the winged monster to
be a fusion of the story of Beowulf's fight with Grendel and that of his
fight with the dragon.[15]

R.C. Boer identifies Bjarki with Beaw. In the West-Saxon line of kings,
Beaw succeeded Scyld; in the poem _Beowulf_, Beowulf, the Danish king,
succeeded Scyld; in Saxo's account, Frothi I succeeded Scyld. Frothi is
represented as having killed a dragon.

According to the _Hrólfssaga_, Bjarki killed a dragon. As Beaw in one
account occupies the same position in the royal line as Frothi in
another and Beowulf, the Dane, in a third, Boer thinks that Bjarki's
exploit and Frothi's exploit are the same one and that to Beowulf, the
Dane, the same exploit was also once attributed. In Saxo's account,
Bjarki is a king's retainer; and Boer thinks his exploit has been
differentiated from that of Frothi, who is a king. In _Beowulf_, he
thinks, the exploit has been transferred from Beowulf, the Danish king,
to Beowulf, the Geat, and that the differentiation of the deed into two
exploits has been retained--Beowulf, as a king's retainer, slaying
Grendel, and later, as a king, killing a dragon. This identifies
Bjarki's slaying of the winged monster with Beowulf's slaying of