 |
The Heroic AgeIssue 5Summer/Autumn 2001 |
Beowulf and the Wills:
Traces of
Totemism?
By Stephen
O. Glosecki
Department
of English, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Abstract
This paper accounts for the prominence of the avunculate (the mother's brother-sister's son relationship) in Beowulf and other OE sources. Commentary from 1861 to the present is examined in order to establish that the avunculate does indeed reflect matrilineal kinship structure, which in turn suggests that a full-scale totemic kinship system prevailed in prehistoric Germania.Reprinted with revisions from: Philological Quarterly, Winter 1999, 78: 15-47.
After Hygelac falls in his Frisian raid, Beowulf receives a surprising offer from Hygd, his widowed queen (lines 2367-70a):
Oferswam ða sioleða bigong sunu Ecgðeowes,
earm anhaga eft to leodum;
þær him Hygd gebead hord ond rice,
beagas ond bregostol.Then he overswam the surrounding seas, son of Ecgtheow,
troubled exile, returning to his people;
there was he offered by Hygd hoard and kingdom,
rings and prince-seat.
Hygd's offer sounds
strange for a number of reasons.[1]
I wonder, for instance, whether the early Germanic queen really
had the power to select her husband's heir from the array of
likely claimants, thus overriding folkright, the unwritten but
implicit rules of descent. Further, I wonder exactly how those
rules operated in preliterary Germanic Europe, whose folkways
were at least as obscure to the insular Anglo-Saxon as they are
to us today.[2] Given
the tenacity of oral tradition, I assume the legend inherited
by the Beowulf Poet included a Geatish queen who offered
the throne to the hero, whom Hrothgar also singles out as Hygelac's
most viable heir (lines 1845b-53a). That is, the poet receives,
in his palimpsest-like folklore, an already ancient and overscored
tradition of non-patrilineal descent among his ancestors. To
him this is not altogether outlandish, since lateral succession
prevails in Alfredian Wessex as in Scylding Denmark, Hrethling
Geatland, and Scylfing Sweden, where brother follows brother
to the throne.[3] In
Anglo-Saxon England right up to the time of the Conquest there
was not only regional and temporal variation, but in general
no fixed rule of succession anyway, with various kinsmen of kings
being potentially throneworthy (and therefore inherently predatory).[4] There is, however,
no question that primogeniture was gradually asserting itself,
favored by the same interrelated forces that gradually eroded
the solidarity of the kindred: Church, monarchy, remnants of
Roman law, and the infiltration of feudalism, finalized by the
Anglo-Norman regime.[5]
Ultimately, prone to such influences and therefore inclined toward
primogeniture as the "right" line of inheritance, the
Beowulf Poet has his hero reject the Geatish crown on
behalf of Hygelac's son Heardred (lines 2373-79a), whom he then
serves as sagacious regent until his cousin's death again confronts
him with his throneworthiness.[6]
I think the poet thus accommodates a murky, idealized, misapprehended
past to his own turbulent times.[7]
Yet the questions persist nonetheless, despite nice theorizing
about probable periods and possible motives: could prehistoric
queens select royal successors? What inheritance pattern prevailed
in the lost culture of North Central Europe that shaped the legends
received in Anglo-Saxon England?
Ultimately, in a reality that denies us Wellesean time travel, such issues cannot be completely resolved. But at least we can narrow down the range of probability, working from literary and documentary evidence. Such is my goal here: to reexamine an old solution to some of the inheritance problems posed by Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon wills. Since the argument for a matrlineal past in prehistoric Germania fell from grace decades ago, my case takes some time to present. I will, however, return to the primary texts toward the end of this paper. Meanwhile, my argument profits from advances in literary study and cultural anthropology-recent discoveries that make certain discarded solutions worthy of a second look today. The methodological advance reinforcing this paper-an outgrowth of structuralism, perhaps-can be seen in books by Davis (1996) and Hill (1995), both of whom explore more recent tribal societies to discover culture traits comparable to the hypothetical situation of the Anglo-Saxons.[8] Although a final resolution may continue to elude us, certain likelihoods nonetheless need to be reviewed if we are to acquire some inkling of the dynastic traditions suggested by Hygd's strange offer of the crown to Beowulf.
Perhaps an offer like Hygd's is not really strange at all. Rather,
it may only seem so, since our "own kinship system is so
taken for granted that other systems will at first seem bizarre,
irrational, and difficult to appreciate."[9]
This is the lens we look through, unavoidably-the familiar arrangement
in our surrounding society, which seems "natural" to
us because we rarely need to fathom any of the multifarious alternatives
that have developed in "alien" systems. "Everywhere
children begin learning their kinship system at birth. Many of
their first words are kinship terms; the people who care for
them are all relatives. The kin words become essential guides
to action because they place persons in categories and assign
statuses."
Accordingly, our own kinship perspective is as limited as that of the Beowulf Poet, although along different lines. Like ours, his kin structure was bilateral, i.e., the individual reckoned descent through both parents, mother and father. Recurrently, the laws and wills specify obligations and bequests for both sides of ego's kindred, maternal and paternal.[10] We may assume that folkright was equally bilateral, albeit now unrecoverable. The bilateral family, somewhat like the obsolescent wachselnde Sippe, "shifting kin group,"[11] has traditionally been considered antithetical to long-lasting "kinship solidarity" (Phillpotts 1913:3),where enduring clans develop to produce fixed rules of exogamy, ancestor veneration, and, ultimately-given natural, usually zoological eponyms-the quasi-religious culture complex called totemism. But "we are not compelled to regard highly corporate kin functions simply in terms of the unilineal principle, for we now know that groups recruited on the basis of cognation, or a combination of principles, can carry them out as well" (Murray 1983:25). Most likely, the long prehistory of Anglo-Saxon kinship structure involved various shifts in reckoning patterns, although there is no reason to impose any pat evolutionary schema upon the Germanic or any other tribal past. In comparison with our own form of cognation, nowhere in Anglo-Saxon England had the system crystallized into the rigidly patronymic arrangement that has governed Western culture in the modern period. Children did not receive their father's surname regularly and automatically at birth, an institution we have come to consider "normal." The early English kinship system thus appears to have been in flux when compared to ours:[12] the inclination toward a more fixed patrilineal arrangement had established itself without fully eclipsing significant reflexes of an archaic matrilineal element. The outstanding reflex (see Glosecki 1989:1 for definition), often noticed but rarely explained, manifests itself in the provocative distinction given to the mother's brother, a distinction apparent in the wills as well as in Beowulf.
Following Lancaster, scholars have tended to deny that an outmoded
unilineal system existed in the Germanic past and exerted subtle
influence upon kinship structure in Anglo-Saxon England. While
the emphasis on the mother's brother has never been satisfactorily
explained, recent writers tend to agree with Lancaster (1958:232;
also Hill 1995:13-14):[13]
Bilateral or cognatic kinship systems may in simplest terms be described as those in which descent from ancestors and affiliation to a set of kinsmen may be traced through both females and males. All societies have some cognatic elements, but those which are thought of as having unilineal descent minimize, in some or all contexts, associations with kin linked to either parent. Consequently, such societies form demarcated kin groups, which persist from generation to generation. In societies that trace relationships bilaterally, on the other hand, each sibling group has affiliations with a different set of cognatic kin . . . . Every person may have his own range of relationships, which coincides exactly with no other in the society. Evidently, bilateral sets of consanguineal kin centered on Ego, the focal relative, have no structural persistence over generations . . . . Anglo-Saxon kinship systems, like those of modern England, belong to the class of non-unilineal kinship.
Granted the evidence
marshalled by, for example, Hill, Lancaster, Lyon, and Phillpotts,
the cognatic arrangement in historical Anglo-Saxon society is
indisputable. But, as noted above, bilateralism does not necessarily
exclude corporateness of kin groups. And, more to the point,
the Anglo-Saxon record preserves several controversial features
that suggest cultural change, long before the Migrations, from
a totemic arrangement involving matrilineal clans to the more
amorphous, less durative, agnatically biased kindred of the historical
period.[14]
Chief among these features
is the mystifying emphasis on the mother's brother, by the time
of the Beowulf Poet already a sentimental, vaguely discerned
anachronism, employed by the narrator partly as an aspect of
his heritage and partly to enhance the antiquarian dignity of
his patriotic song. Yet several other elements also suggest the
kin-solidarity of an obsolete clan system. One of these is the
tenacious corporateness of the mægð , "family,"[15] the undeniably bilateral
kindred that nonetheless seems to have kept its shape over generations
while maintaining the gradually diminishing power reflected in
the legal codes (Phillpotts
1913:216).[16]
In Beowulf, certain terms for the comitatus seem
like holdovers from an earlier age, when the united warriors,
members of a factitious kin group-precursor of the mægð
-considered themselves consanguineal relatives: mago-driht,
sibbe-gedryht, "the band of noble kinsmen-warriors"
(cf. mago-rinc, "kinsman-warrior," and mago-ðegn,
"kinsman-retainer"). The mægð itself
remains obscure; none of the extant evidence allows us to define
its limits or its full array of social applications. As Loyn
(1973:202) observes, "much was taken for granted . . . .
The laws are practical documents. They do not pause to reflect
on the substance of kinship. They describe rather kinship in
action. Function predominates." Phillpotts
(1913:217) is more emphatic: "in England no passage,
in the laws or out of them, gives the slightest indication of
the limits of the mægð."
Yet she also quotes one of Aethelstan's laws (VI. 8, § 2), attributed to the authorities in London, that allows for raising armies to do battle with any mægð powerful enough to harbor a thief and thus contend with an entire city.[17] Like the determined early Londoners, we are obviously confronted with an organized corporate group, if not a territorial clan, with the size and strength to resist a besieging army.[18] There could be no other motivation for such a law. Clearly, too, we can discern that "at this level the kindred was in closest contact with the power of the state, and out of contact, often developing into conflict, came elucidation" (Loyn 1973:203). Out of this contact, too, came demise-the demise of the kindred and the rise of monarchy.[19]
As Murray (1983:25)
argues, though, "corporate functions are in themselves no
argument for unilineal kin structure."[20]
Nor would I base an argument upon evidence so sketchy and inconclusive
as that of the corporate mægð. Yet I see its
stamina as one among several "symptoms" of the lost
system of totemic clans. The mægð shows a cohesiveness
that resulted partly from kin loyalty,[21]
partly from military devotion to the lord, and, to some degree,
from the lingering influence of primeval clan solidarity. Such
at least is my contention here, supported too by another feature,
odd from our perspective, but not at all unusual in the record
of tribal kinship patterns.
Most writers on this subject echo Lancaster's (1958:237) observation: "there was a remarkable dearth of special O.E. terms for the relationship of cousins." Phillpotts (1913:243) sees this "remarkable dearth" as an Old English shortfall, remedied by rivals across the Channel:
We have to add the extraordinary fact that Anglo-Saxon literature appears to contain no word signifying "cousin." . . . The whole range of Anglo-Saxon literature does not furnish us with one instance of the use of such a word. Nor can I find the Latin consobrinus in the Latin charters. It is significant that English found it necessary to borrow the word "cousin" from French.
It is indeed significant, but not because of any ethnic or linguistic inadequacy. It is just that the Saxons did not compute their genealogies on our graph. Spolsky (1977:234) bring us closer to the real significance of this lack of specificity in the nomenclature-particularly on the father's side, where the terminology is less distinctive than on the maternal side:
A further ambiguity in nefa is the lack of distinction between collateral descent and direct descent. My son's child and my brother's child are not necessarily distinguished. Nefa is also used to refer to a stepson, presumably my generation minus one. What do all of these people have in common which is important enough to warrant calling them all by the same name?
The answer is simple enough, but its ramifications are complex, especially when we add that nefa could also designate a grandnephew or a grandson, and that "the suhterga can be a brother's son . . . or an uncle's son that is a cousin" (Spolsky 1977:234). Hill (1995:43) almost answers Spolsky's question when he considers "the significance of such precise but compacted compounds as suhtergefæderan applied to Hrothgar and Hrothulf in their kindred . . . the 'father's-brother's son' can become a 'father' . . . and he can become 'son' to his eald fæder, his father's father (moving functionally both up and across in the family tree)." Interpreting the word for "father's brother," Hill continues, "fædera can name Hrothgar's position in relation to Hrothulf, whose sons could be called Hrothgar's brother's grandsons or 'nephews' (nefa)." Adding to this complexity is Beowulf, line 373a, "where Ecgtheow is referred to as Beowulf's ealdfæder though the word usually means grandfather" (Spolsky 1977:234).[22] Indeed, "what do all of these people have in common" that, from our perspective, erases the "normal" distinctions between cousin, nephew, grandson, grandnephew, and even father and grandfather?[23]
Simply put, this telescoping of ego's patrilineal and patrilateral
kinfolk typifies what anthropologists call the Crow kinship system,
named after the Native American tribe whose classic matrilineal
structure has become the template applied elsewhere.[24]
In the Crow system, matrilineal relatives are deemed "consanguineal,"
while patrilineal relatives, though significant in ego's life,
are not viewed as members of his clan, which is "the focal
point of a person's life where descent is unilineal. Clans may
determine an individual's spouse, occupation, religious role,
and position in the prestige system" (Schusky
1972:29). As Murdock
(1960:15; see also n. 15) puts it, "a rule of descent affiliates
an individual at birth with a particular group of relatives with
whom he is especially intimate and from whom he can expect certain
kinds of services that he cannot demand of non-relatives, or
even of other kinsmen."
Accordingly in the Crow system, though still important, the entire array of paternal relatives collapses into an "other" group, loosely defined as "father's kindred," with much less distinctive nomenclature than the members of the native matrilineal group, who play far more influential roles in ego's life.[25] Hence, to define these roles, the language of a matrilineal society develops more specific terms for ego's clan kindred, all of whom are mediated by maternal relatives only. Thus, only the maternal relatives are considered close, even "consanguineal," although this may seem illogical to us, given our own bilateral orientation. On the other hand, "in thinking of the relatives in 'father's' lineage, ego may regard all of them as lineage mates of father; that is, lineage mates are like a 'brother' and 'sister' to father. The implied logic is that any lineage mate of father is a brother of my father . . . That is, a large group of men are in the same status relation to ego, something like men of the lineage that 'fathered' ego. Missionaries and others who translated native terms into English had to equate the indigenous word with the English 'father'." (Schusky 1972:30). Thus we struggle to translate ambiguous terms like nefa and suhterga into Modern English, which has grown much farther away from the prehistoric unilineal structure whose reflexes remain apparent-and perplexing-in Old English.
As asserted above, then, a simple answer can be supplied for
Spolsky's question, "What do all of these people have in
common which is important enough to warrant calling them all
by the same name?" It is an old answer, but one now supported
by advances in cultural anthropology. Old English kinship terms
are less distinctive for paternal kinsmen because, deep in the
Germanic past, presumably in the formative stages of the society,
a Crow kinship system prevails. Later on-centuries if not millennia
later on-a bilateral system develops.[26]
But the cultural palimpsest retains faint, barely discernible
traces, the focal points of this paper. Although the Beowulf
Poet and his generations of Anglo-Saxons cannot fathom a system
they never knew, their language and culture still preserved these
traces, willy-nilly-the vestiges of a matrilineal clan system.
Characterized by this blending of the father-kin, "Crow terminology is almost always associated with matriliny" (Schusky 1972:33). Recognizing the conflation of paternal relatives means acknowledging this theory of a Crow kinship structure, viable at some period in proto-Germanic prehistory. Among the convergent terms for paternal kindred (Fig. 1), the most notable Crow types are fæder, "father," and fædera, "another father," i.e., "father's brother." Faðu, "father's sister," is interesting here too, since it seems to blur "sexual distinctions" somewhat (cf. Goody 1972:25). Back formations from fæder, these terms lack much distinctiveness. Their key denotation seems to be "father-sibling." This convergence reflects the matrilineal point of view described above, where ego regards "relatives in 'father's' lineage . . . as lineage mates of father."[27]
Conversely, relatives in the mother's lineage assume more distinctive
roles, apparent in the Old English term eam, "mother's
brother." Although the eminence of MoBr, "mother's
brother," seems largely sentimental by the historical period,
the fact remains that eam is among the most distinctive
of all Old English kinship terms. Prehistorically important-before
the first Germanic expansion-its cognates surface in sister-tongues[28] and persist (in orthographic
variants) right through the Middle English period.[29]
The very inertia of this archaism suggests great weight originally,
strong cultural impetus. My inference is that this uncle was
at some time the heafodmæg, "head-kinsman,"
of the matrilineal Germanic clan. Perhaps, as in Tewa clan hierarchy,
the senior mother's brother was "the enforcer," hence
chief, while his sister was venerated as figurehead.[30]
Significantly, heafodmæg is the term Beowulf applies
to his MoBr Hygelac at line 2151a.[31]
I have treated the etymons of eam elsewhere, in my study
of sibreden, "the kin treaty," where I suggest
the following etymology for this term that may persist in Germanic
lexicons as a reflex of matriliny: "*awo-z-haim for
the head of a household, a key role played, apparently, by the
senior mother's brother . . . the *awozhaim or 'great
father of the hamlet'" (Glosecki
1989:46-47).[32]
Germanic kinship structure, though markedly different from the
Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-American, is thus similar in one respect,
at least, to various tribal systems studied in modern times,
where the avunculate-the bond between MoBr and SiSo "sister's
son"-tends to overshadow less important relationships.[33]
Keeping in mind that "the domestic group in preindustrial
societies is usually the economic group" (Goody
1972:21), I view reflexes of the avunculate in Beowulf
and the wills as traces of totemism.[34]
One of the most plausible explanations is that these reflexes
persist as remnants of a totemic kinship system in which the
basic exogamous group was both matrilineal and matrilocal. In
such an arrangement, the male finds a wife outside of his own
clan. After marriage, he-or at least his children-will reside
with the wife's family, the offspring's matrilineage. When a
son is born, he inherits his totem from his mother and not
from his father. The lineage is thus mediated by maternal kindred
only; in effect, the descending line stops at male and continues
through female progeny (Schusky
1972:24-33). Therefore, if the father bequeathed his ancestral
wealth and status upon his son, this patrimony would pass out
of his own natal clan and into the matriclan of his affines.
To avoid weakening his own matriclan by thus siphoning off its
wealth and titles, the father bequeaths obliquely, to his sister's
son, born into the clan where the father grew up and where his
emotional ties, his kin-solidarities and family loyalties, still
reside. In this kind of kinship system, where neither patriliny
nor cognation nor primogeniture prevail, the bond between maternal
uncle and uterine nephew eclipses the bond between father and
son. It is the most important bond of all, economically and politically.[35]
In theory, then, the preexistence of an exogamous matriliny-the
Crow kinship system-would explain why patrilineal kinship terms
converge, why the avunculate leaves traces in Old English sources,
why the "spindle-kin" retain notable status, and why
the Anglo-Saxon wills enrich nephews at the expense of sons.
Regarding Old English reflections of the avunculate, Bremmer
(1980:23) observes
that "it has not escaped scholars that Beowulf stands in
a special relationship to king Hygelac of the Geats, but they
have rarely gone beyond quoting this illustrative example of
MoBr and SiSo in an Anglo-Saxon context. And yet quite a few
instances of this bond are to be found in non-literary works
of the period."[36]
Bremmer assembles not only avuncular elements from the epic;
he also lists references to sustres sun, sweoster-sunu,
and so on in history, chronicle, will, and Riddle 46 from the
Exeter Book.[37] This
Riddle is usually taken as a reference to Lot's incest with his
daughters, which produced two sons. Notably, the term applied
to the sisters' sons in line 4a is frumbearn, glossed
by Bosworth and Toller as "firstborn, primogenitus,"
with the genitival compound frumbearnes riht meaning "firstborn's
right" or the right to inherit. There thus seems to be a
lack of definiteness regarding the identity of the principal
heir-son or sister's son?[38]
The question is only affirmed, not resolved, by the Anglo-Saxon
wills, which demonstrate no clear precedence for either, nephew
or son.[39] Granted
their relative obscurity in Anglo-Saxon studies, we may think
of the wills as neglected orphans lurking on the fringe of the
literary domain. Though neglected, they have not been abandoned:
about fifty wills are readily available in editions by Harmer
(1914) and Whitelock
(1930). Substantial
studies appear in books by John (1960)
and Sheehan (1963).
Although I first approached the wills expecting to find inheritance
rules neatly mapped out, with mothers' brothers regularly leaving
lands to their sisters's sons, the documents themselves soon
dispelled such rosy preconceptions. Like the laws, they provide
for the exception, not the rule: they assume on the reader's
part an intuitive grasp of folkright. John and Sheehan agree
that folcriht represents part of the Anglo-Saxons' native
Germanic heritage; they also agree that these implicit folkways,
vestiges of a preliterary society, remain very obscure to us
today (John 1960:16,
n. 2; Sheehan 1963:5)
There is little question, though, that these lost customs specified
rightful heirs, probably a good number of them, perhaps with
a preference for sisters' sons. Testamentary power was unheard-of,
initially, among the Anglo-Saxons, whose estates were transmitted
by well-established conventions beyond individual control-folkright.
But by the end of the period, written wills had become common,
even expected, to judge from the laws of Cnut, which allow for
property owners who die intestate (Sheehan
1963:81). The written will evolved in response to the folkright
restrictions; it opened a loophole in customary inheritance laws;
it instituted the right to alienate property (propria postestas);
it let the landowner concentrate family wealth in the hands of
chosen heirs. Thus the advent of the written will marks
"a revolution in English landholding, making it possible
to consolidate family power by establishing primogeniture and
keeping the family holding together" (John
1960:41, n. 1).
The wills grew up alongside the charters or "landbooks,"
already common by Alfred's day. Charters granted bookright as
opposed to folkright. They distinguished bookland, alienable
estates, from folkland, inalienable estates. Concomitantly, the
wills capitalized on the freedom to collect and bequeath bookland.
In his late ninth-century will (c. 880), for instance, Alfred,
Ealdorman of Surrey, designates bookland beneficiaries but acknowledges
his lack of control over the folkland (Harmer
1914:14, 48):
7 gif se cyning him gunnan wille þes foldlondes to ðem boclonde, þonne hebbe he 7 bruce.
And if the king will grant him the folkland as well as the bookland, then let him have it and enjoy it.
But such wills do little, overtly, to clarify the issues of folkland, folkright, and the traditional lines of inheritance.
Wills and charters alike resulted from ecclesiastical efforts
to preserve clerical estates, the original booklands, within
a social system that originally did not provide for bequests
untrammeled by claims of the kindred. There was no lay bookland
in the seventh century, when the written charter was introduced
by Theodore and St. Wilfrid (John
1960:1). But in 734 Bede complained about the fraudulent
monasteries of Northumbria-lay estates falsely represented as
abbeys by sly nobles eager to acquire bookland and the associated
right to consolidate and bequeath it.
This right, treasured by Anglo-Saxon nobility, is often mentioned
at the outset of the will, which assumed a fairly consistent
format by the tenth century. The testator, almost invariably
an aristocrat, first gives his or her name, then declares royal
permission to bequeath, and then specifies heriot. Often a parcel
of gold, land, arms, and horses, the Late Saxon heriot seems
like a payment to the king for the right to make a will and the
insurance that he will uphold it.[40]
From the king's perspective, it is a lucrative inheritance tax.
After heriot come the ecclesiastical grants, sawolsceatt,
"soul-tax," to the church of burial, wealth and lands
to other minsters and monasteries. After the church come the
kindred, in no discernible order aside from pride of place for
widows. Although movable goods appear (and offer rich resources
for the study of domestic life), the wills mainly concern themselves
with distributing land to king, cleric, and kinfolk. Therefore,
estates are tallied up in detail-over seventy separate holdings
spread through eleven counties in the will of Wulfric Spott (Sheehan 1963:99). As it
concludes, the will may designate a mund, "guardian/executor,"
gifts to priests and servants, plus elaborate arrangements for
almsgiving and manumission of thralls. Following an anathema
calling the wrath of God down upon will-breakers, the document
concludes with a list of witnesses. Although content, order,
and emphasis vary from one document to the next, these are nonetheless
the standard components of the Late Saxon will.
While they generally ignore the folkright inheritance rules, assumed at the time to be common knowledge and therefore otiose, the wills do contain intimations of a native kinship system formerly matrilineal and totemic. One such hint is the high status of the early English noblewoman, whose prestige declined markedly during the ensuing Middle Ages.[41] Before the Anglo-Saxon period, Tacitus seems surprised to find that Germanic tribesmen respected their women(ch.8); with disgust he reports that one tribe debased itself by allowing women to rule (ch.45). Beowulf retains vestiges of the prestige queens enjoyed: Wealhtheow gives the richest ring in Heorot, Hygd feels free to manipulate the Geatish succession, and the merewife is manifestly more powerful than her son Grendel, despite the poet's hastening to say that femininity alone makes her the weaker monster (lines 1282b-87). The wills also reflect feminine power and status-part of the noblewoman's Germanic birthright-which declined steadily after the Conquest, falling to the point where, by 1285, the wife no longer had the right to make a will nor, implicitly, any other right to alienate property controlled by her husband and inherited by her eldest son.
But Anglo-Saxon widows could retain control of their husbands'
estates, as shown by several rich wills in Whitelock's edition,
where ten of thirty-nine are bequests by women.[42]
And even where the husband stipulates that his widow must remain
unmarried in order to inherit, he acknowledges her ownership
of the morgengyfu, "morning-gift," usually seen
as a sort of life-insurance policy, support for the wife if she
should survive her husband.[43]
Thus in his ninth-century will the reeve Abba says that, should
his widow remarry, then his kinsmen should take charge of his
estate 7 hire agefen hire agen, "and give her back
her own property" (Harmer
1914:3). The widow Wynflaed also distinguishes her morning-gift
from the rest of her estates, bequeathing it to her son with
reversion to her daughter in the event of his death. But this
daughter has already appeared as first heir in Wynflaed's will,
receiving jewelry and lands before the son is even mentioned
(Whitelock 1930:10).
Elsewhere sons fare much more poorly, as in the aforementioned
will of Alfred, Ealdorman of Surrey (Harmer
1914:13-14). His wife and daughter receive 104 hides of bookland,
with forty-four of those to go unbefliten, "undisputed,"
to the daughter after the wife's death. On the other hand, Alfred's
son receives a scant three hides, and only 100 swine as opposed
to 2,000-twenty times as much livestock-for wife and daughter.
By favoring female heirs over sons, such arrangements may reflect
the substratum of a lost Germanic inheritance system, which once
gave vast prestige to the maternal kindred. Such arrangements
also show that primogeniture was not yet the rule in Late Saxon
England. In fact, as Sheehan (1963:78)
writes, "it is remarkable how rarely a son is indicated"
in these wills. And earlier in the period sons fared more poorly
still. In Middle Saxon times, according to Bede, the sons of
Northumbrian nobles were forced to leave the country if they
wanted land, virtually exiling themselves (John
1960:45).[44] Apparently,
Anglian folkright offered them next to nothing. Puzzled by this
problem, John asks, "Why could these young men not expect
to inherit from their fathers?" They suffered such dim prospects,
I suggest, because the native Germanic inheritance system, disintegrating
for various reasons while the written will evolved, favored not
the son but rather the sister's son as principal heir.
Sisters' sons do seem to appear as often as sons in the bequests,
despite the late date of most surviving wills. For instance,
King Edgar's Ealdorman Alfheah bestows one estate upon his son
and one upon his sister's son (Whitelock
1930:no. IX). Here son and nephew share equal status as heirs.
Another mid-tenth-century will bequeaths the bulk of the estates,
aside from rich ecclesiastical endowments, upon three sisters's
sons (Whitelock 1930:no.
I). Most striking, though, is the eleventh-century will of Wulfric
Spott, mentioned above, who bestows estates upon a variety of
kinfolk, including his suhtergan, "brother's son,s"
Wulfheah and Ufegeat. But no one receives nearly as much land
as Morcar, who in effect becomes Wulfric's principal heir. Unfortunately
Morcar's relationship is not specified in the will; but Whitelock
assumes he is yet another sister's son (Whitelock
1930:153).
Beowulf, too, is one of these, a favored nephew who inherits
wealth and status from his mother's brother. Together, he and
Hygelac form the centerpiece of an avuncular series that not
only "antiques" the epic for the poet, but also unifies
it for the reader. First we encounter the Sigemund digression
(lines 874b-900), which suggests that the link between mother's
brother and sister's son is the closest of all Germanic kin bonds.
For the poet emphasizes its confidentiality, stating how Sigemund's
nephew Fitela was the only person who knew of hidden deeds, heroic
feats lost to history and hence Hrothgar's knowledgeable scop,
too. The scop knows as much as anyone except Fitela, in
whom Sigemund confided (lines 880-83)
þonne he swulces hwæt secgan wolde,
eam his nefan, swa hie a wæron
æt niða gehwam nydgesteallan;when confidences he cared to share,
uncle to nephew, since they forever remained
in each pitched battle companions in need.
As Bremmer (1980:32-33)
suggests, the sister's son may have been expected to join his
mother's brother's warband: "within as well as outside the
poem we have evidence that MoBr and SiSo went to battle as comrades."
Thus the poet gilds his patrons' past with glimmerings of noble
antiquity, adding these avuncular pairs, once upon a time revered
as king and prince in the matriclan, where as heafodmagas,
"head-kinsmen," they shared uppermost status and authority.
At the same time, while enhancing the romantic setting and unifying
the epic, these archetypal pairs are not figments of the poet's
fiction, but remnants of his mythos and folkright-part of his
Germanic heritage, fixed by tradition in the material he inherited.
Yet the artist, as nexus of folkways, continually reweaves old
strands and new.[45]
It is fitting that Sigemund and Fitela appear first, since like
the historiola or "epic" of a charm, they supply
the mythic precedent that not only foreshadows but also validates
ensuing avuncular allusions, glittering like rivet heads elsewhere
in the epic, holding the ornate artifact together.
Emphasizing the closeness of the bond, Bremmer offers an alternate reading of the next pair, Hnaef and his sister Hildeburh's son, nameless in the Finnsburg Episode (lines 1063-1160a) [46]. Although "critics have usually assumed that they were fighting on different sides," Bremmer (1980:33) argues, "there is no indication whatsoever in the text for this assumption. The probability should not be dismissed, therefore, that Hildeburh's son was a member of Hnaef's comitatus." This scenario is worth considering, especially since in a preliterary matriclan the uncle and nephew would share the same unilineal totem and unilocal residence, thus forming a tight configuration, a "true atom of kinship." Whatever the nature of their relationship, though, it is undeniably close, emotional, and, to the Beowulf Poet, not just sentimental but exceptionally tragic when the two fall in the same fight. His geomuru ides, "mournful lady," Hildeburh (line 1075b), sheared of brother, son, and in the next battle husband too, commits the two to the same sad pyre (lines 1114-17):
Het ða Hildeburh æt Hnæfes ade
hire selfre sunu sweoloðe befæsten,
banfatu bærnan, ond on bæl don
eame on eaxle. Ides gnornode.Hildeburh commanded on Hnaef's funeral pyre
that her own son then be sent to the flames,
his bone-vats burnt, and so upon the bier he lay
by his mother's brother. She mourned, that lady.
This scene may represent the utmost tragedy in the old Germanic tradition: the fall of uncle and nephew-formerly chieftain and heir?-upon the same battlefield. Thus could a dynasty's present and future be cruelly swept away.
Beowulf's devotion to Hygelac represents the same kin-loyalty,
since he and his uncle were "shield-companions" in
their prime. Recounting his adventures before the dragon fight,
the aged hero clearly takes pride in his archetypal devotion
to king and uncle. Equally clear is the inspiration the old man
finds in fond memories of his beloved leader (lines 2497-2500):
Symle ic him on feðan beforan wolde,
ana on orde, and swa to aldre sceall
sæcce fremman þenden þis sweord þolað,
þæt mec ær ond sið oft gelæste.Always in the foot-troop before him I went,
alone at the point; and in life must I thus
excel in battle while this sword endures
that soon and late saved me often.
To us it may seem strange that, although the paternal relationship crops up throughout the epic with hollow regularity, Beowulf's own father Ecgtheow seems somehow distant, divorced from the hero, a biological necessity and not the close companion represented by his maternal uncle. This, too, suggests the traces of a matrilineal arrangement, where sometimes "the word for father carries only a social definition . . . it means 'a man married to my mother'" (Schusky 1972:37). In the Crow system, it is mother and her brother who stand out as focal points in the clan--as heafodmagas. The miscellaneous fathers all fade together.
Commonly, too, it is the sister's son who inherits status and
property from his mother's brother, a point emphasized above.
My position is that the Beowulf Poet, swayed by Late Saxon
influences like primogeniture, had no sharp recollection of avuncular
inheritance, although traces of it lingered in the wills of the
nobility. But this oblique line of bequeathal was petrified in
traditions received from the continental home of his ancestors.
Although we can only attribute the uncle/nephew relationship
tenuously to the last two leading characters, the pattern established
by other riveting pairs supports Bremmer's (1980:35-36)
hypothesis:[47]
In his farewell-speeches Beowulf has given Wiglaf full instructions as to the funeral (lines 2802-8). Wiglaf, so to say, becomes the executor of Beowulf's will, and indeed carries out his lord's instructions with authority. Although the epic ends with the funeral rites performed for Beowulf and a last ode to him by the poet, it does not seem adventurous to assume that Wiglaf, as the last member of the Waegmunding clan (lines 2813-14a), succeeds his kinsman to the throne.
I share Bremmer's assumption that "Beowulf is Wiglaf's maternal uncle, or, in other words, that Wiglaf is the son of a sister of Beowulf's, even though such a sister is not mentioned in the poem."[48] He supports his argument with a convincing diagram, showing the stemma from Waegmund through Wihstan to Wiglaf. Thus Bremmer views Wihstan as aðum, "son-in-law," "sister's husband" (the term had both meanings) to Ecgtheow and Beowulf, respectively. The intimacy of the avuncular bond seems implicit in Wiglaf's exceptional fidelity to the hero, which mirrors Beowulf's own loyalty to his uncle before him (and so forth back down through the mythic lineage to an Anglo-Saxon alcheringa, "illo tempore"). Indeed, the patterning of the epic seems to demand that a mother's brother/sister's son pair complete the narrative, thus filling out expectations set up by the recurrent focus on the preceding pairs. As in three-dimensional design, the same stylized motifs repeat themselves. This gives us a matching "rivet head" at the close of the epic by placing "Wiglaf in the same relation to Beowulf as Hildeburh's son to Hnaef and Fitela to Sigemund" (Bremmer 1980:36), not to mention the hero himself to Hygelac min, "my Hygelac" (line 2434b).
The warmth of Beowulf and Wiglaf's relationship is equally characteristic
of the avuncular bond. And to my mind the gifts bestowed by the
dying king seem exceptional indeed. More than opulent rewards,
these treasures are the royal regalia, like the crown jewels,
a globe and scepter, or the riches from Sutton Hoo (lines 2809-16):[49]
Dyde him of healse hring gyldenne
þioden þristhydig, þegne gesealde,
geongum garwigan, goldfahne helm,
beah ond byrnan, het hyne brucan well-
"þu eart endelaf usses cynnes,
Wægmundinga; ealle wyrd forsweop
mine magas to metodsceafte,
eorlas on elne; ic him æfter sceal."From his neck he took the torque of gold,
thinking of glory, gave it to the thane,
the young spear-warrior, and the yellow-gold helm,
rings and his mail-shirt, commanded, "Use well!-
Now come you last in this lineage of ours,
we Waegmundings, all wasted by fate;
kinsmen of mine carved out their doom;
noble the heroes; now must I follow."
The necklace seems tantamount to a crown, typologically if not historically. It is a large gold ring, property of the sacral king-royal regalis symbolic of state, more than we would expect a retainer or an earnest cousin to get from any grateful lord. And when we pile on the other gems and accoutrements, the image cluster becomes more than rich, even in the glittering catalogues of epic. It is royal, like the grave goods of Anglian or Upplandish kings. Beowulf's gifts to Wiglaf are a virtual investiture. The dying monarch bequeaths the emblems of office. Again, I suspect that hints of Wiglaf's succession filter through to us from a much earlier period, from a culture quite different from that of the poet, who feels bound to attribute impulses of primogeniture to his fading hero (lines 2729-31):
Nu ic suna minum syllan wolde
guðgewædu, þær me gifeðe swa
ænig yrfeweard æfter wurde.Now would I bestow upon a son of my own
these war-garments if he were given to me,
any guardian of heirlooms afterwards coming.
The fuzzy image here, son superimposed upon nephew, reflects the blurring of cultures in the social continuum of Anglo-Saxon England. Wiglaf's impending succession-barely suggested in the poet's own material and so as faint to him as to us-gives the epic artful closure, like the Aristotelean restoration of order in the catastrophe of Lear. Thus he hammers his last rivet home.
Aside from these reflexes of the avunculate in Beowulf,
other "symptoms" of totemism need further study. Shamanic
lore lurks in rune, riddle, and charm as well as in epic, gnome,
and elegy (see n. 8).
In the future, more connections should be made between sources
usually studied alone, e.g., epic and charm, epic and will, epic
and charter. Archaeology steadily unearths surprises that reconfigure
the corpus. For example, we have yet to articulate the implications
of the Pioneer Helmet, found in the Midlands in 1997. But as
the third boar helm in a corpus of four, its ramifications are
significant. This paper barely introduces kinship concerns. Nor
has the full range of animal folklore been explored. Along with
the shapeshifting motif, zoological nomenclature also suggests
totemism. In personal names, animal referents suggest that proto-heraldic
beasts once symbolized the kindred. The same can be said for
the place-name Heorot, "Hart," Hrothgar's dynastic
seat, his men's house said (line 780a) to be banfag, "decorated
with antlers." Other group-related animal images have similar
overtones, e.g., the boar-adorned battle standard that Hrothgar
gives Beowulf (who in turn presents it to Hygelac upon his homecoming;
line 2152b). This standard can be compared with the anomalous
Sutton Hoo scepter, adorned with a stag figurine, an artifact
that "may have been vested with a totemic significance that
cannot easily be translated into modern concepts."[50]
Along with the stag image, individualized faces carved on the
scepter suggest ancestor veneration in the culture of the artist,
which was probably as much "Swedish" as "English"
in the early seventh century. At the outset of the epic, too,
the mythic overtones of Scyld Scefing-a culture hero comparable
to Ing or Frey-may stem from venerating the eponymous ancestor,
another totemic trait. Is that Scyld's face peering down from
the Sutton Hoo scepter, first in line?
When viewed alongside the kinship concerns discussed above, these
isolated motifs gain a new coherence, since they all look like
traces of totemism in Old English sources. In a totemic frame,
these scattered elements combine into an integral whole-ancestor
veneration, zoomorphic names and symbols, suggestions of kin-solidarity,
converging terms for paternal kinsmen, flecks of matrilineal
patterning plus faint reflexes of the avunculate from Beowulf
and the wills. Suggesting an obscure past, these reflexes
reach the poet who in turn transmits them to us. Ultimately,
then, in view of the restrictive nature of folkright, it is unlikely
that his character Hygd, despite the high status of the Germanic
queen, ever had the power to abrogate customary rules of succession
in prehistoric Geatland. And when the poet implies that Hygelac's
rightful heir is his son Heardred, he probably introduces an
anachronism by projecting primogeniture upon continental Germanic
culture long before it developed there. He hastens to explain
Hygd's motive for the attempt to disinherit Heardred in favor
of Beowulf, sister's son of the slain king (lines 2370b-72):
Bearne ne truwode,
þæt he wið ælfylcum eþelstolas
healdan cuðe, ða wæs Hygelac deadShe didn't trust her son,
that against threatening outsiders the throne of the homeland
he knew how to hold with Hygelac dead.
I suspect that the poet imputes this motive and interpolates the reign of Heardred because primogeniture was gaining currency in Anglo-Saxon England when the epic was composed. He received legendary material wherein the sister's son succeeded the mother's brother. Unaccustomed to this prehistoric pattern, he may have invented Hygd's offer in order to account for Beowulf's oblique ascent to the Geatish throne-transversely, along the lost line of the avunculate. But the avuncular line of inheritance, weakly reflected in the wills too, may have been the folkright rule in early Germanic Europe. And vestiges of this pattern, not fully eradicated, are among the more notable traces of totemism in the Old English corpus.
|
|
|
|