being made king of his own tribe, and meets his death while killing a
fire-breathing dragon which has become a scourge to his people. As he
appears in the poem, Beowulf is an idealized Anglo-Saxon hero, but in
origin he may have been any one of several other different things. Perhaps
he was the old Germanic god Beowa, and his exploits originally allegories,
like some of those in the Greek mythology, of his services to man; he may,
for instance, first have been the sun, driving away the mists and cold of
winter and of the swamps, hostile forces personified in Grendel and his
mother. Or, Beowulf may really have been a great human fighter who actually
killed some especially formidable wild beasts, and whose superhuman
strength in the poem results, through the similarity of names, from his
being confused with Beowa. This is the more likely because there is in the
poem a slight trace of authentic history. (See below, under the assignments
for study.)

'Beowulf' presents an interesting though very incomplete picture of the
life of the upper, warrior, caste among the northern Germanic tribes during
their later period of barbarism on the Continent and in England, a life
more highly developed than that of the Anglo-Saxons before their conquest
of the island. About King Hrothgar are grouped his immediate retainers, the
warriors, with whom he shares his wealth; it is a part of the character, of
a good king to be generous in the distribution of gifts of gold and
weapons. Somewhere in the background there must be a village, where the
bondmen and slaves provide the daily necessaries of life and where some of
the warriors may have houses and families; but all this is beneath the
notice of the courtly poet. The center of the warriors' life is the great
hall of the king, built chiefly of timber. Inside, there are benches and
tables for feasting, and the walls are perhaps adorned with tapestries.
Near the center is the hearth, whence the smoke must escape, if it escapes
at all, through a hole in the roof. In the hall the warriors banquet,