 |
The Heroic AgeIssue 5Summer/Autumn 2001 |
Beowulf and the Wills: Traces of Totemism?
Notes and
Bibliography
Acknowledgments:
This paper began as a presentation on the wills at the 1991 Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, where Phillip Pulsiano included it in a session called "Anglo-Saxon Orphans: New Approaches to Neglected Texts." For such support I am grateful to Phillip and also to Jill Frederick, Geoffrey Russom, and Elaine Treharne. Recently, the advice of John M. Hill has been indispensable. Unless otherwise attributed, translations of Old English are mine.
Notes:
1.
Part of my purpose in this paper is to reexamine aspects of the
outmoded argument for "the matriarchate," proposed
by German scholars well over a century ago, starting with Bachofen(1897). A Darwinist evolutionary
theory proposing patterned stages in social development, Bachofen's
argument-that matriarchy precedes patriarchy, which then gives
way to cognation-exerted its most profound influence in the writings
of Karl Marx. Via such writers as Bastian, Tylor, and Frazer
(and, one might add, Joseph Campbell), this nineteenth-century
notion has influenced medieval studies ever since, if only subliminally
for the last generation or two. The theory has been rejected,
by American if not by English Anglo-Saxonists, but never fully
refuted. A detailed history of the dispute appears in Murray
(1983:12-32). Milestones in the study
of Anglo-Saxon kinship structure can be found in the works by
Grønbech (1931), Lancaster
(1958), Phillpotts (1913),
and Seebohm (1911). Ausenda (1935) also explores Germanic kinship
structure. Learned but less reliable are works such as those
by Shore (1906) and Gummere (1901, 1930).
Gummere's book is deemed "excellent" by Klaeber (1950:clxxvi) in my text for this paper.
Murray engages the extensive German scholarship throughout his
book (in turn, Ausenda engages Murray). Contrasting the geschlossene
or feste Sippe, "closed or fixed kin group,"
with the wechselnde Sippe, "open or shifting kin
group," Murray (1983:16, n.
12) notes that "examples of the traditional teaching can
be found everywhere in German (and many non-German) historical
works, legal and otherwise." Murray (1983:16)
also indicates that "patterns of reckoning relationship
are reflected in the terms Schwert-, Ger-, or Speermagen,
the sword or spearkin, composed of male relatives of the male
line, and Spindel-, Spill-, or Kunkelmagen,
the spindle kin, consisting of females or those related through
a female; another classification was current which simply divided
the Magschaft, or kindred, into Vatermagen and
Muttermagen, relatives whose relationship was mediated
through one's father and mother, respectively." By 1920
Aron (1920:6) could say that "the
literature on the subject has grown to . . . 437 titles."
In his day he could assume widespread acceptance of Das Mutterrecht:
"we have shown that matriarchy must have existed among the
Germans centuries before Christ in a purer form than Tacitus
and Germanic hero-lore give evidence of" (Aron
1920:72). Such confidence in social Darwinism and suppositional
reconstructions of "Urgermanentum" (Phillpotts
1913:256) would be impossible today. Treating "the Cycle
of Beowulf," Aron (1920:50)
could also unreservedly "quote Gummere's excellent comments
on these passages" (including lines 2367-70a): "it
is clear that Beowulf is expected to succeed his mother's brother
on the throne," a presumption that I find probable, prehistorically,
though not at all clear by the time of the Anglo-Saxons. Further,
according to Gummere (1930:138; and
Aron 1920:50), "when Hygelac
is slain, Beowulf shall marry the widow and rule over the realm,
an expectation clearly founded on precedent custom, which cares
little for the fact that Hygelac has left a son." Though
worthy of reconsideration, Gummere's "precedent custom"
is anything but clear.
2.
One might argue that modern scholarship informed by hindsight
puts us in a better position to survey the past than those who
actually lived it. It is as though we were looking back over
many ranges from a high pass, while the Saxon, if he bothered
to look back at all, would see his valley pathway swallowed by
close woods, not far from the sound of water.
3.
Thus it may be most accurate to speak of "fratrilateral"
rather than agnatic or bilateral succession among the royal families
of these proto-historical Germanic nations. As argued below,
I suspect that the prehistoric pattern was cognatic in the obsolete
sense, i.e., "matrilineal," with mother intermediating
between heirs, specifically between her brother and her son.
Whereas the term cognatic was formerly opposed to agnatic or
"patrilineal," nowadays it is used strictly as a synonym
for bilateral. This ambiguity must be kept in mind, however,
when exploring the older secondary sources. For help with this
galaxy of anthropological terms, see the glossary in Schusky
(1972:89-93). This book remains the
best introduction to the formal study of kinship. In the present
context, the following entry in Schusky (1972:91)
is especially noteworthy: "MATRIARCHATE: Rule of the family
by the mother; no strictly matriarchal peoples are known."
My own studies confirm this assertion, although matrilineal arrangements,
as in the Crow kinship system (Schusky
1972:33-38), are common.
4.
The lack of regular succession rules made dynastic strife inevitable
throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. A recent treatment of this
topic can be found, with relevant bibliography, in Stafford's
book. She writes that "throneworthy is a highly charged
political term . . . a claim rather than a title, and those who
used it . . . were making political bids as much as stating inheritance
rules" (Stafford 1997:83). Further,
"indeterminacy hung over the inheritance prospects of royal
males" (Stafford 1997:84). It
seems likely that the array of conceivable heirs was at least
as complex in Germania as in the turmoil of Anglo-Saxon England,
where migration, conversion, serial monogamy (Stafford
1997:66), internecine warfare, interregnum, and invasion
prevented any final resolution of the inheritance pattern throughout
the entire period. The vexed issue of succession finally brought
the period itself to a violent end, fomented by strife among
rival claimants, a Norwegian, a Norman, and two Godwinsson hopefuls
whose claim was based mainly upon Cnut's advancement of their
capable father and-for Harald though certainly not for Tostig-the
rumor of Edward's deathbed selection.
5.
One could consider feudalism itself a medieval adaptation of
Roman law, or rather of the Late Roman manorial system. Outmoded
romantic views, dominant at the end of the nineteenth century,
envisioned not only the ignis fatuus "the matriarchate"
(see n. 1; Schusky [1972:72] discusses
"earlier anthropologists who saw great differences between
matriliny and patriliny. Much useless debate occurred over which
came first"). The romantic view also saw Germania as a confederation
of free warrior-farmers, mutually committed in the Mannerbund,
untrammeled by the repression of feudalism. Wisely, Phillpotts
(1913:256) cautioned against such
idealizations of arcane and undoubtedly ruthless times: "We
must therefore beware of regarding the Icelandic commonwealth
as a new Germania of Tacitus, miraculously appearing in the Northern
seas to show us what Urgermanentum was really like. Anglo-Saxon
England is almost equally suspect from this point of view."
Utopian visions of a free Germania necessarily overlooked the
extensive slave trade, endemic in all the medieval Germanic kingdoms,
a major impetus for Viking raids. Manumission of slaves is quite
common in the Old English wills-to occur, of course, after
the death of the testator. And while it may be valid to oppose
odal to feudal landholding in the Early Saxon Period, archaeologists
continue to unearth, in field boundaries and elsewhere, clear
evidence of manorial subdivision on Late Saxon estates.
6.
See also Eliason (1978). The Geatish
throne, for some reason resisted by the hero, is now conveyed
as a virtual fief bestowed by Heardred's killer, Onela, upon
whom King Beowulf, following his anachronistically feudal preferment,
eventually wreaks vengeance, thus exacerbating the Hrethling/Scylfing
feud that darkens the end of the epic with that mood of impending
doom.
7.
The inclination nowadays is toward a post-Alfredian provenance
for the poem-see Chase (1981)-rather
than Whitelock's "Age of Bede." While I find Niles's
Anglo-Danish argument most convincing, I also suspect that distinctions
like "Anglo-Danish" may have more to do with British
politics than with social realities in that attractive archipelago,
which probably had vastly more permeable borders and a much less
monolithic culture than we have been taught to envision ever
since the historiography of Bede. That is, Anglo-Saxon and later
Scandinavian immigrants probably were closer in language and
culture than we have been taught, as suggested by Moulton. The
very nature of the English national epic suggests this: geographically,
a "Swede" fights trolls in "Denmark," but
nonetheless is enshrined as England's folk hero. In any
case, I beseech Aeolus to confine these winds in his bull-hide
bag for now. Since the current essay looks past Anglo-Saxon practice
for a glimpse of prehistoric possibilities, the year that saw
quill scrape parchment is immaterial here.
8.
Hill (1995:5) looks "to historical
analogues in northern Europe and France, as well as to near past
and present societies on the Pacific rim, in Southeast Asia (especially
the so-called 'house societies'), among North American Indians,
and elsewhere. What matters is similarity of social organization,
not ethnic background or geography." Like Hill (1995:5),
"my anthropological procedure in general is analogical,
comparative, cross-temporal, and opportunistic. I look to ethnographies
for societies organized in ways that recall details of the social
and cultural world of Danes, Geats, and Swedes in Beowulf."
Here and elsewhere I use the term tribal in reference to Hill's
"house" or "face-to-face" societies, a category
that includes the premigratory Angles and Saxons, Norse and Frisians.
Broadly (recent political developments engendered by the American
clearances notwithstanding), tribe specifies a premarket, preindustrial,
and often preliterary culture, usually organized in small, contiguous,
frequently factitious kin groups, where family is indistinguishable
from polity. Cf. Glosecki (1989:2):
this examination of Germanic society "cannot be accomplished
without reference to unrelated tribal cultures that have been
closely studied in modern times. Such comparisons by no means
imply that the Norse and Netsilik, for instance, had identical
folkways or any historical connection." With Ausenda (1995:40), "I would like once more
to underscore the fact that there is no 'comprehensive model'
. . . that applies to all pastoral societies whether past or
contemporary."
9. Quotations in this paragraph appear in Schusky (1972:15).
10.
Phillpotts (1913:esp. 1-9, 205-44)
devotes much of her book to an analysis of the laws, with particular
regard to wergilds, where she tends to ascribe "to Danish
influence passages which show a slightly greater degree of kin-solidarity"
(Phillpotts 1913:242). See also Lancaster
(1958:239-47, 360-62). A convenient
list of the key legal codes, chronologically arranged, appears
in Rivers (1975:209, n. 5). Equally
interesting is Klinck (1982). The
classic study is that by Pollock and Maitland (1898).
The wills receive attention below.
11.
See Murray (1983:16): one school
of thought "defines the shifting kin group as Blutsverwandten,
Verwandtschaft, or Magschaft, the whole circle
of an individual's blood relations. The word Sippe . .
. has to be applied to both these conceptions, although its primary
and original meaning applies only to the agnatic lineage (feste
Sippe or Geschlechtsverband)." Here Murray pinpoints
the origin of a persistent ambiguity that blurs the meaning of
sib, a synonym for the more precise term clan, "a compromise
kin group based on a rule of residence and a rule of descent.
A unilocal rule of residence combines with a unilinear rule of
descent. Some affinal relatives are included and some consanguineal
kinsmen excluded" (Schusky 1972:90).
12.
As with the continuum of sound change, a subtle but ongoing process,
cultural change constantly surrounds us too, although we tend
to regard our own institutions, like our own phonology, as some
kind of fixed standard, a touchstone for analyzing other systems.
In the social ferment of the last few decades, some American
parents have adopted the practice of giving children dual, occasionally
hyphenated, surnames, thus introducing cognate variants to a
traditionally agnatic nomenclature.
13. This, too, is the thesis of Murray's book: "there is no evidence for the idea that the society of the ancient Germans was rooted in a clan or extensive lineage structure" (Murray 1983:8; cf. 6-7, 11-12, 14-17, 27, 29; yet his admission on p. 14 is compelling: "it cannot be said that the debate was ever completely settled"). Loyn (1973:204-205) acknowledges the bilateral nature of the attested system: "both paternal and maternal kin participated in the composition group."
14.
Matrilineal descent concerns kin reckoning, primarily. The term
'matriarchy' has no real validity in attested human cultures
(see n. 3). Often in matrilineal
societies, such as that of the Tewa, the eldest sister of the
clan may be a prime dignitary; however, it is her eldest brother
who has the real political power (Dozier
1966). Should we therefore speak of an "avuncu-archy"
rather than a "matriarchy"?
15.
Ausenda (1995:15-18, 39) also discerns
corporateness in the Germanic fara, "clan."
One of my underlying assumptions is that the Anglo-Saxon meaning
of family-and even more so the putative early Germanic meaning-was
not the same as ours. Though not fully recoverable, its limits
and emphases fell in different places, distinguishing some kinfolk
(e.g., eam, "mother's brother" versus fædera,
"father's brother") and blurring others together (e.g.,
nephew and grandson, both called nefa). Murdock's (1960:1-2) observation is astute: "The
term 'family' is ambiguous. . . . The nuclear family will be
familiar to the reader as the type of family recognized to the
exclusion of all others by our own society. Among the majority
of the peoples of the earth, however, nuclear families are combined,
like atoms in a molecule, into larger aggregates." In full-scale
totemic systems, for instance, lineages (similar to "families"
in our limited sense) are grouped in clans ("extended families,"
roughly; also called sibs) that may in turn be gathered
in phratries; the phratries may then be assembled into moieties
(roughly "halves"). Various sorts of sections and subsections
may also figure in such "larger aggregates," with fixed
rules of exogamy ("seeking a wife outside one's kin group")
established to prevent illegal marriage (broadly "incest,"
but such family groups often include individuals bearing no consanguineal
relation to one another, in our sense of the term; yet exogamic
practice still proscribes marriage between members of the same
clan, phratry, moiety, etc.). For concise elaboration, see Schusky
(1972:53-75).
16.
See, e.g., Phillpotts (1913), Lancaster
(1958), and Loyn (1973:201-205).
17.
Cf. Lancaster (1958:237): "the
mægð need not have been an extensive
group." No doubt the kindred varied radically in size. As
Phillpotts (1913:217-18) shows, the
laws do allow for the mægleas, "kinless,"
man, whose plight, dreadful to the Anglo-Saxons, is immortalized
in The Wanderer. Yet, while the kindred need not always
have been large-and its size, like quantities of wealth, was
no doubt a measure of one's fortune back then-it could not, on
the other hand, have been small in a confrontation with the city
of London.
18.
This power can hardly have resided elsewhere than in the comitatus
relationship romanticized in Beowulf. There is no doubt
that patriarchal military solidarity contributed to the cohesiveness
of the mægð, as Spolsky argues. Her chart
of kinship terms is extremely useful (Spolsky
1977:238). Even more detailed are the lists of consanguineal
and affinitive kinship terms assembled by Lancaster (1958:235
and 248, respectively), who also schematizes the kindred with
genealogical diagrams.
19.
In the celebrated Cynewulf and Cyneheard entry ("in the
Parker chronicle, entered for the year 755, although Cynewulf
dies in 786" [Hill 1995:14-15];
the chronicle is two years behind events, also, which would make
the correct entry year 757), we see the conflict of loyalties
dramatized in a realistic account: when offered quarter by their
kinsmen among the attacking army, the defenders declare that
they could never follow their lord's enemies. Battle ensues,
and the defenders fall with their lord, kinsmen against kinsmen.
Apparently, life imitated art in Anglo-Saxon warfare.
20.
Here he must be responding directly to Phillpotts (1913:243):
"the whole case for kinship-solidarity in England really
rests on the not very frequent occurrence of the word mægð
in the laws." This misrepresents the case, though, since
other evidence can be marshaled, too. I should emphasize that
my argument is not at all for clans and totems still extant in
Anglo-Saxon England, but rather for strong reflexes of a clan
system that continued to color early English art and culture.
Further, to fathom this art and culture we need to acknowledge
its prehistoric foundation.
21.
The proverbial kin loyalty of this period was both manifested
in and maintained by feuding, bequeathing, marriage negotiations,
and compurgation, as well as the elusive rights and obligations
implicit in the mysterious abstraction folcriht.
22.
There is no question that Ecgtheow is the hero's father. An important
detail here, not noted by Spolsky, is that in line 373 the poet
uses ealdfæder in a C hemistich with a vowel in
the following head-stave: wæs his ealdfæder
Ecgðeo haten, "was his old-father
Ecgtheow by name." That is, the poet's diction is
determined more by prosody than by semantic accuracy: he needs
the compound's initial diphthong to meet the demands of vocal
alliteration. But what we might see as imprecision, semantically,
is not that at all. To the poet, the distinction between "father"
and "grandfather" is so minimal that the two terms
are virtual synonyms, interchangeable for the sake of his metrics.
This proves the point made above: the reflexes of a matrilineal
kinship system were still strong enough in the poet's day to
exert their influence upon patrilineal and patrilateral
kinsmen. Differences between father figures just did not matter
that much yet in Anglo-Saxon England, a situation reinforced
by everyday life, where grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers,
and their male progeny ate, worked, fought, and attended meetings
together all the time. There was as yet no dispersal of the extended,
much less the nuclear, family. And in the Crow system one can
literally say that a father is a father's brother is a father's
sister's son is a father's sister's daughter's son (this expands
Schusky's [1972:33] more technical
equation: "Fa=FaBr=FaSiSo=FaSiDaSo"). Or at least this
is as close as Modern English can come to describing a relationship
pattern beyond the pale of our lexicon.
23.
Goody interprets such blurring of some distinctions and sharpening
of others as a function of the universal incest taboo, a determining
factor in kinship arrangements. Goody (1972:25)
writes that so far as terminology is concerned ...
the number of roles distinguished within each generation tends to be maximal in the terms for an individual's own generation and for the first ascending, that is, the parental generation. In the second ascending generation, that of the grandparents, the most widespread systems are marked by a merging of terms, disregarding lineal and sometimes sexual distinctions. . . .
The same feature is even more marked in the grandchildren's generation, so that in alternate generations to an individual's own, kin tend to be reduced to a single category.
24. A concise account of the Crow as opposed to the Omaha (patrilineal) system appears in Schusky (1972:28-44). Lounsbury (1964) is the definitive treatment.
25.
It is wrong to jump to the conclusion, though, that matrilineal
clan members ignore their links with father's kindred. This is
a common misconception, clarified by Murdock (1960:15-16):
An earlier generation of anthropologists completely misunderstood rules of descent, assuming that they meant a recognition of certain genealogical ties to the exclusion of others, e.g., that a matrilineal people is either ignorant of, or chooses to ignore, the biological relationship of a child to its father. . . . It is now known that the Hopi and most other societies with matrilineal descent do not deny or ignore the relationship of a child to its father and his patrilineal kinsmen. . . . Descent, in fine, does not necessarily involve any belief that certain genealogical ties are closer than others, much less a recognition of kinship with one parent to the exclusion of the other. . . . It merely refers to a cultural rule which affiliates an individual with a particular selected group of kinsmen for certain social purposes such as mutual assistance or the regulation of marriage.
26. It is difficult to determine whether an agnatic system intervened. Certainly there is no "evolutionary" need for an "agnatic stage" of societal development. But cultural transformation itself is a regular, predictable phenomenon, though not governed by any fixed rule anthropologists can discern. Anglo-Saxon kinship seems to afford an example of "the change of particular lineal organizations as the descent system becomes bilateral" (Schusky 1972:73).
27.
Recognizing the Crow pattern in Old English nomenclature confirms
Hill's (1995:43) assertion that "the
father's-brother's son can become a father." By extension,
so can father's-sister's son, father's-sister's-daughter's son,
etc.
28.
E.g., Old High German óheim, Old Frisian ém,
Middle Dutch oem.
29.
E.g., æem, æm, hem, eyme,
eme, em, attested in Arthurian works from Layamon's
Brut to Malory's Morte D'Artur.
30.
Traces of goddess-worship, as in the mysterious cult of Nerthus,
suggest prehistoric prominence of sacral women. The merwif
seems to reflect a mythic underworld "tooth mother,"
too.
31.
Cf. Hill 1995:41: "Hygelac is
his maternal uncle (eam), lord, and great kinsman."
32.
Here too I touch upon the Indoeuropean background of MoBr, a
topic beyond the limits of this paper. My conclusions do not
wholly concur with those of Spolsky (1977:235),
who suggests "that PIE awyos (OE eam) denoted,
at least in several dialects of PIE a set of older men in the
mother's patrigroup."
33.
The anthropological material on this topic is extensive, e.g.,
Goody (1959); Lowie (1970);
Malinowski (1971); Radcliffe-Brown
(1965); Richards (1971);
and Schusky (1972:8, 30, 37). My
own main source is Lévi-Strauss (1967:46),
who covers the anthropological background and proposes his own
theory, which sees the avunculate as a basic component in human
kinship reckoning: "this elementary structure, which is
the product of defined relations involving four terms, is, in
our view, the true 'atom of kinship'." A classic study is
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1965), "The
Mother's Brother in South Africa," first published in the
South African Journal of Science and later reissued. As
Bremmer (1980:21-22; see n. 36) writes
"although his explanation has been proved wrong and his
representation of the facts was misleading, he greatly advanced
upon Bachofen in that he discarded
the evolutionary scheme in which the special relationship was
considered as a survival of matrilineal times." I too discard
"the evolutionary scheme," but feel that the evidence
still suggests prehistoric matriliny in the Germanic record,
though not in the "evolution" of human society as a
whole, which is far too complex to be explained by clockwork
quasi-Marxist "stages."
34.
In popular usage the term totem is generally misconstrued. Like
"evolutionary matriarchy," totemism also has a checkered
past in twentieth-century cultural anthropology. We tend to equate
the totem with the animal guardian of an individual; but guardianship
is not the main significance of the totem. Primarily,
the totem is a kinship sign-a group-related symbol that associates
the individual with his or her lineage. Indeed, a wealth of secondary
lore usually attaches itself to totems, which often function
as major classificatory devices in societies where they appear.
But such lore is secondary to the role of the totem as a delineator
of kin groups. For this basic definition I return to the etymon
of totem, an Ojibwa word first recorded in the eighteenth
century by the explorer John Long (1791).
Lévi-Strauss (1963:18) analyzes
Ojibwa ototeman, parsing its morphemes to extract the
meaning "he is a relative of mine," which strikes us
as strange in reference to a wolf or a bear. Correctly, he places
the totem in a "collective naming system . . . not to be
confused with the belief . . . that an individual may enter into
a relationship with an animal which will be his guardian spirit."
To indicate the animal guardian the Ojibwa used another word,
nigouimes, unrelated, morphologically, to their kinship
term ototeman. So we too should distinguish between the
totem, a kinship sign with other folk implications, and
the nigouimes, "animal guardian," a personal
vehicle of spirit power. The former is public and group-related,
the latter individualistic, sometimes wholly private. The latter
receives attention in Glosecki (1989).
In turn, I consider shamanism another Germanic "symptom"
of totemism, a type of kinship system that often occurs alongside
shamanic modes of healing and harming.
35.
Once again, Schusky (1972:37, regarding
Malinowski's Trobrianders) is illuminating:
In some contexts a "father" is like a stranger or an outsider, but he is also like the American father who cares for his children and lavishes affection upon them. Unlike an American son, however, the maturing boy discovers he belongs to a group different from his father. He begins learning many duties, restrictions, and concerns for pride that unite him with his mother's group but necessarily separate him from his father and his group.
As a boy matures the MoBr becomes a more important figure, and
this male separates a boy even further from his father. The child
begins to learn that he is regarded as a "stranger"
in his father's village; his "own" or proper village
is the one occupied by MoBr. In the village of MoBr a young man
finds property rights, opportunity to succeed in office, and
a future career. His natural allies and associates are the group
associated with MoBr. In this circumstance, MoBr and his group
increase authority over him, demand many services from him, and
grant or withhold permission over a number of actions. Mother's
brother will even determine in large measure whom ego will marry.
Correspondingly, the authority and counsel of the father and
his group decrease.
36. The mother's-brother/sister's son bond has been pointed out often enough to be common knowledge in Beowulf studies. Yet no satisfactory explanation of its origin and function has been given so far, as Bremmer suggests. He also cites commentary (Bremmer 1980:23, n.12) on the subject by Gummere, Seebohm, and Spolsky (see n. 1). Shippey (1978:22-23) suggests that SiSo regularly inherited from MoBr in preliterary Germanic society.
37.
Bremmer (1980) cites the text as
"no. 47"; but it is listed as Riddle 46 in Krapp and
Dobbie (1936:205).
38.
It is true that incest complicates this example, since Lot's
sin blurs the lines between father and grandfather, sister and
mother, sister and aunt, brother and cousin.
39.
Since Bremmer (1980) lists the specific
avuncular passages in Beowulf and the wills, the rest
of my paper highlights key examples to avoid covering the same
ground twice. Bremmer also quotes the avuncular locus classicus,
ch. 20 of Tacitus' Germania, which emphasizes the closeness
of the bond between MoBr and SiSo.
There are eight laws indicating the state's prohibition of remarriage by widows within one year of their husbands' death. . . . A widow who remarried within this allotted time was to lose her morning-gift and all property which she inherited from her deceased husband, even if she was married against her will. The severity of this violation was extended to the husband the bereaved wife married, since he must forfeit his wergeld to the king. Nor were widows to be consecrated as nuns too hastily after their husbands' deaths. The reason for all this frowning on urgency is a simple one. If widows married or entered the convent within the first year of their husbands' death, the king lost the heriot tax, a principal source of revenue.
41.
Another complex issue, quite volatile in the past few decades
of Old English scholarship, the role of noblewomen occupies me
in another project, where I mainly agree with Stafford (1997)
and Fell (1984).
42. The issue of widows' rights is also complex. See Klinck (1982) and Rivers (1975).
43.
The morning-gift issue is related to the controversy regarding
dower or "bride-price" and dowry, a topic covered by
Stafford (1997:66-67). Essentially,
the dower does not equal purchasing of the bride, as some argue
(e.g., Klinck 1982:109-10). Instead,
it is a compensation of the bride's family for the loss of a
valuable member. It is also rather like a deposit assuring good
treatment of the wife by her husband's family: if ill-treated,
she can return to her kindred who may then keep the dower. Even
more, though, both dower and dowry in Anglo-Saxon England are
public expressions of the status of the groom and bride, or of
each family's impression of its own status. The greater the dower,
the more prestigious the groom. In the context of premarket culture,
we cannot apply modern ideas about "buying and selling"
when it comes to these marriage arrangements. For an anthropological
explanation of the bride-price, see Murdock (1960:19-21).
44.
Phillpotts (1913:262-64) mentions
continental examples of "these supernumerary heirs,"
who have been listed among the traditional causes of the Viking
expansion as well as the nineteenth-century Norwegian emigration
to North America.
45.
Niles (1998:499) eloquently expresses
this syncretic aspect of the epic in his review of Davis (1996): Beowulf demonstrates "the
ability of literature to absorb changes that affect society as
a whole, assimilating non-native elements to entrenched patterns
of thought and giving expression to these new syntheses in symbolic
form." It seems that the converse appertains equally: entrenched
pattern assimilates to innovation, too. The avunculate gives
way to primogeniture.
46.
Bremmer's suggestion that MoBr and SiSo were traditional comrades-in-arms
seems credible, with the uncle as master-, the nephew as apprentice-warrior.
With nydgestealla, cf. hondgestealla, "hand-companion,"
lindgestealla, "linden[-shield]-companion,"
both applied to the relationship between Hygelac and Beowulf
(lines 2159a, 1973a; Bremmer 1980:33,
n. 55). These compounds have the shape of a formulaic epithet
for the uncle/nephew. It seems equally likely that, as Klaeber
(1950:251) notes, in Finnsburgh
Fragment 18-21 "the Frisian Guðhere tries to restrain
the impetuous youth, Garulf-perhaps his nephew, cp. Nibel.
2208 ff., Walthariaus 846 ff.-from risking his life 'at
the first onset.'" Thus the master and MoBr Guðhere
attempts to teach battle-sense to his apprentice and SiSo Garulf.
Tragically, the traditional mentor fails, though. In true epic
vein, Garulf seems glad to earn glory with a heroic death.
47. Elsewhere in his article, he argues for other putative MoBr/SiSo pairs, such as Heardred and Hererice (Bremmer 1980:29), Hygelac and Swerting (Bremmer 1980:30).
48.
This runs counter to Hill's theory that Wiglaf "is Beowulf's
kinsman on his father's people's side." Although no final
criterion of male relatedness, Hill's case would be served by
alliteration between the names Ecgtheow and Waegmund, which does
not occur. Citing Irving (1989:115),
who also doubts Wiglaf's succession, Hill (1995:182,
n. 13) argues against the inference that Wiglaf is Beowulf's
heir), a likelihood supported by the hero's own, albeit clouded,
accession to the Geatish throne as well as by the possible veiled
influence of matrilineal patterning in the epic's prehistory.
49.
Hill (1995:182, n. 13), on the other
hand, believes that "Beowulf's free gifts . . . honour Wiglaf
even as they express close kinship." For different reasons,
Eliason (1978:101, 104) also doubts
the avuncular connection and Wiglaf's succession.
50.
Evans (1986:85) reads the carved
faces as evidence of ancestor veneration.
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