A Book of Myths, by Jean Lang - Umnet

knew best. And if you should walk along the breezy, magnificent,
rugged Yorkshire coast for twelve miles, from Whitby northward to the
top of Bowlby Cliff, you would find it quite easy to believe that it was
there amongst the high sea-cliffs that Beowulf and his hearth-sharers
once lived, and there, on the highest ness of our eastern coast, under a
great barrow, that Beowulf was buried. Beowulfesby--Bowlby seems a
quite easy transition. But the people of our island race have
undoubtedly a gift for seizing the imports of other lands and
hall-marking them as their own, and, in all probability, the Beowulf of
the heroic poem was one who lived and died in the land of Scandinavia.
In Denmark, so goes the story, when the people were longing for a king,
to their shores there drifted, on a day when the white birds were
screaming over the sea-tangle and wreckage that a stormy sea, now
sinking to rest, was sweeping up on the shore, a little boat in which, on
a sheaf of ripe wheat and surrounded by priceless weapons and jewels,
there lay a most beautiful babe, who smiled in his sleep. That he was
the son of Odin they had no doubt, and they made him their king, and
served him faithfully and loyally for the rest of his life.
A worthy and a noble king was King Scyld Scefing, a ruler on land and
on the sea, of which even as an infant he had had no fear. But when
many years had come and gone, and when Scyld Scefing felt that death
drew near, he called his nobles to him and told them in what manner he
fain would pass. So they did as he said, and in a ship they built a
funeral pyre, and round it placed much gold and jewels, and on it laid a
sheaf of wheat. Then with very great pain and labour, for he was old
and Death's hand lay heavy upon him, the king climbed into the ship
and stretched out his limbs on the pyre, and said farewell to all his
faithful people. And the ship drifted out with the tide, and the hearts of
the watchers were heavy as they saw the sails of the vessel that bore
him vanish into the grey, and knew that their king had gone back to the
place from whence he came, and that they should look on his face no
more.
Behind him Scyld left descendants, and one after the other reigned over
Denmark. It was in the reign of his great-grandson, Hrothgar, that there