Three Trollish Swords, Part III
Ecg sceal wiþ helme
In the first two parts of this series (here and here), we have seen eotonisc swords as essential to overcoming the monsters in Beowulf. In the final part, we will look at a eotonisc sword that at first seems to be an exception: the ealdsweord etonisc wielded by Eofor, which is not used to kill a troll or a dragon but a Swedish king. Nevertheless, we will see that the pattern we have identified holds true for this sword as well: it appears suddenly, when a formidable foe seems to be gaining the upper hand, and reverses the course of the battle. The enemy in this case, Ongentheow, is also described with terms that seem to place him in a similar category to the monstrous opponents of the other heroes.
The lines under consideration today comprise not only the final occurrence of our formula ealdsweord eotonisc in the poem; they are also the final occurrence of any form of the word eoten – and, significantly, the final occurrence of a form of the word ent. In fact, here in their final appearance, these two terms are closer than they are anywhere else in Beowulf or out of it: not only sharing a single line (2979), but separated only by the caesura:
Ealdsweord eotonisc entiscne helm
As we will see, this line constitutes a test-case for the meanings of the terms we are considering here – for the associations clustering around the terms eoten as well as ent. In this single line, the distinct characteristics of these terms and their associations is condensed in something like an ideal expression, a dual formula of opposition.
The entirety of this episode is presented as a speech. A messenger brings to the waiting Geats news of the dragon-fight and its outcome. This messenger recounts the story of the Swedish wars as part of contextualizing the grim future that can be expected for the Geats now that Beowulf, their protector, is dead.
This is the only instance in the poem where a character is shown to use forms of eoten or ent. As we saw in Part I, the lair-sword is called by Beowulf an ealdsweord eacen, not eotonisc. The only giant-term that Beowulf himself uses is thyrs. No other characters ever speak of eotenas or entas in any way; even gigant is not spoken.
If we can make anything of this tendency within the poem, it may be that the Beowulf-poet is attempting to present his (pagan) characters as ignorant of entas and eotenas. We can only guess at why this may have been the case. But ent, as we have seen elsewhere, has a fairly restricted meaning in Old English. Entas are consistently presented as ancient builders and craftsmen, who are frequently associated with Biblical or classical giants and heroes (figures such as Nimrod, Goliath, Hercules, the antediluvian giants of Genesis and the giant inhabitants of Canaan in Numbers). These associations are not clearly expressed in the poetry, where only the phrase enta geweorc (and a few variants of enta/entisc) can be found; but it is reasonable to suppose that a sufficiently educated Anglo-Saxon could connect these ancient buildings and other works to the giantish forerunners of antiquity. Such a connection is precisely what the pagan characters in Beowulf could not be expected to make. Ignorant of the Biblical origin of the entas and gigantes, the pre-Christian Geats and Danes of the poem would not know to whom to ascribe the construction of the dragon’s barrow or the treasures therein.
As for the eotenas, represented most fully by the Grendelkin, the Beowulf-poet, by presenting them in a Christian context at several points (linking them with the gigantes who struggled against God, ll. 112-13, as well as tracing their descent from Cain, l. 107, 1261), may have felt they too should be a mystery to his pagan characters. Certainly they seem so to Hrothgar, who claims that ‘no hie fæder cunnon’ (1355, ff.). A thyrs may have been seen as a more common sort of monster, something that all, pagan and Christian alike, would have been familiar with - and indeed it may be instructive that thyrs appears as an element in several English place-names, ent only rarely, and eoten not at all.1 Again, if the Beowulf-poet was attempting to recontextualize the eotenas, to place them in a Christian setting, he may have felt that they were creatures whose origins should, to his pagan characters, be fairly obscure – and thus, they should not be spoken of.
Why both terms ent and eoten should appear in a speech only now, at the end of the poem, is unclear. Perhaps the explanation given above is too rigorous: some direct reference to these creatures may have been acceptable; there may have simply been little occasion elsewhere for characters to use those terms. On the other hand, the speech of the messenger is one of the longer and more complicated speeches in the poem (ll. 2900-3027), covering one highly dramatic episode in fair detail and alluding to several others (Hygelac’s final raid against the Franks; the death of the dragon and Beowulf; the imagined future for the Geats). It could be, then, that the drama of the Ongentheow episode – especially the very moment of its climax, 2979 – which was embedded in this already full series of stories, overwhelmed the ‘rule’ that the poet had otherwise established.
After first recounting the troubles to be expected from the Franks now that the great king Beowulf is dead, the messenger turns to an event deeper in the past, yet involving a more immediate threat: that of the Swedes, a people with whom the Geats share a complex and often violent history. The messenger proceeds to describe in some detail the Geats’ epic campaign against the Swedish king Ongentheow – a campaign that took place while Hygelac yet lived, before Beowulf’s kingship.
Ne ic te Sweoðeode sibbe oððe treowewihte ne wene, ac wæs wide cuðþætte Ongenðio ealdre besnyðedeHæðcen Hreþling wið Hrefna Wudu,þa for onmedlan ærest gesohtonGeata leode Guð-Scilfingas.Sona him se froda fæder Ohtheres,eald ond egesfull ondslyht ageaf,abreot brimwisan, bryd ahredde,gomelan iomeowlan golde berofene,Onelan modor ond Ohtheres,ond ða folgode feorhgeniðlanoð ðæt hi oðeodon earfoðlicein Hrefnes Holt hlafordlease. -ll. 2922-35
Nor do I from the Swedes expect in the slightestpeace or good faith; people everywhere knewthat at Ravenswood Ongentheowcut down Haethcyn son of Hrethelwho in his arrogance earlier soughtwith our Geatish warriors the grounds of the Scylfings.The old and wise one, Ohthere’s father,grim and terrible, returned the slaughterslew the sea-king and saved his wife,his elderly bride deprived of gold,mother of Ohthere and Onela,and then he followed the foes in retreat.They hardly escaped that horror, lordless –at Ravensholt he ran them to ground.
At first Ongentheow’s deeds are presented as those of any famous warrior: his actions against Haethcyn are ‘wide cuð’; he is in fact rescuing his ‘bryd’ and ‘gold’ from the Geats, who have sought out the Swedes ‘for onmedlan’ (arrogantly). His first epithet is ‘froda’, meaning ‘old’ or ‘wise’ (or both).
But next we see him as ‘eald ond egesfull’ (old and terrible/terrifying), giving ‘ondslyht’ (onslaught). He ‘abreot’ (destroyed, killed) Haethcyn, king of the Geats and older brother of Hygelac. ‘Abreot’ is a word earlier used to describe the action of Grendel’s mother, tearing Aeschere from sleep, and to describe what Beowulf’s companions, staring into the bloody mere after their lord, imagine she has done to him, ripping him apart. It is also a word used of the action undertaken by Beowulf and Wiglaf against the dragon, after Wiglaf’s sword has plunged into the creature and Beowulf has carved it with his seax. The root means ‘break’, and suggests a particularly violent slaying or dismemberment.
After slaughtering Haethcyn and rescuing his own wife and treasure, Ongentheow pursues the Geats, his deadly foe (‘feorhgeniðlan’), to Hrefnes Holt, which they barely reach. Lordless and defeated, surrounded by Ongentheow’s huge army (‘sinherge’), the wound-weary Geats are now subjected to terrible threats by their old enemy, who will not let them sleep:
Besæt ða sinherge sweorda lafewundum werge; wean oft gehetearmre teohhe ondlonge niht,cwæð, he on mergenne meces ecgumgetan wolde, sum’ on galgtreowumfuglum to gamene. -ll. 2936-41
He surrounded those who’d escaped the sword,weary, wounded - swearing torturesto the wretched band throughout the nightsaying by morning his swords would find thembleed and gut them for the gallows -a game for birds.
Hygelac’s arrival – too late to save his brother, but just in time for these bedraggled survivors – is one of the most stirring entrances in Old English literature, and a rare glimpse of this king of the Geats in his full glory. We may more often remember Hygelac for the disastrous raid memorialized by Gregory of Tours; but he was a hero before his fortune failed:
Frofor eft gelampsarigmodum somod ærdæge,syððan hie Hygelaces horn ond byman,gealdor ongeaton, þa se goda comleoda dugoðe on last faran. -ll. 2941-45
Relief came laterto the sad at heart with the sun’s uprisingwhen they heard the horns of Hygelac soundingtrumpets at dawn as the dauntless one camewith a host of warriors hard at his heels.
Hygelac’s arrival marks the end of fitt XL. XLI begins with what seems to be a broader comment on the fame of this particular conflict and sequence of events – but it could be taken to refer instead (or also) to the literal path of corpses Ongentheow has left for Hygelac to follow:
Wæs sio swatswaðu Sweona ond Geata,wælræs weora wide gesyne,hu ða folc mid him fæhðe towehton. -ll. 2946-48
The Geats and Swedes had left a gory trackthe onrush and slaughter seen from afarhow the fight was begun by the folk with him
But Hrefnes Holt will not be the scene of the final confrontation with Ongentheow. Faced with Hygelac’s army, the Swedish king ‘turns about’ (‘oncirde’) to seek his stronghold and ‘hord’. The Geats will now have to pursue him:
Gewat him ða se goda mid his gædelingum,frod felageomor fæsten secean,eorl Ongenþio ufor oncirde;hæfde Higelaces hilde gefrunen,wlonces wigcræft; wiðres ne truwode,þæt he sæmannum onsacan mihte,heaðoliðendum hord forstandan,bearn ond bryde; beah eft þonaneald uder eorðweall. -ll. 2949-57
The noble one left with his nearest retainersold and solemn his stronghold seekingupright Ongentheow turned aside.He’d heard of Hygelac’s hearth-troops’ valorhis pride and prowess; his own power he doubted –he could not resist those sea-borne raiders,viking invaders, defend his treasurehis heir and his queen - so the old one turned awaysought out his walls.
While capable of terrifying violence, Ongentheow is also presented as a heroic, sympathetic human figure – a goda (good one, or godlike person) with a gædelingum (group of kinsmen or comrades), frod (wise, old, or both), felageomor (very sad, sorrowful), an ‘eorl’ forced to seek his stronghold (fæsten) in order to defend his ‘hord’, ‘bearn ond bryde’ from the sea-men and war-sailors. We are not allowed to forget that the Geats are the aggressors.
Ongentheow does not trust the ‘resistance’ (wiðres) that his men can offer Higelac, so he retreats to his eorðweall, a place he presumably does trust. Similarly, the dragon ‘beorges getruwode, / wiges ond wealles’ ‘trusted in the barrow, in flames and walls’. The dragon’s lair is an ‘eorðsele’ (2410), ‘hlæw under hrusan’ (2411) – Wiglaf himself describes the dragon’s lair as an ‘eorðweall’ (3090) – like Ongentheow’s ‘eorðweall’ (2957) to which he ‘retired, fled’ (beah, 2957; form of ‘bugan’). But, for the dragon as well as for Ongentheow, ‘him seo wen geleah’ (2323) ‘this belief would deceive him’. In both battles, the fight occurs not inside the protective earthen walls of the strongholds that the defenders value so highly, but outside, in the open:
Þa wæs æht bodenSweona leodum, segn Higelacesfreoðowong þone forð ofereodon,syððan Hreðlingas to hagan þrungon.Þær wearð Ongenðio ecgum sweorda,blondenfexa on bid wrecen,þæt se þeodcyning ðafian sceoldeEafores anne dom. Hyne yrringaWulf Wonreding wæpne geræhte,þæt him for swenge swat ædrum sprongforð under fexe. -ll. 2957-67
Pursuit was calledafter the Swedish people - the standard of Hygelacrushed over the rampart of that field of refugewhen the soldiers of Hrethel shattered the shieldwall.Then was Ongentheow, old and gray-haired,cornered, trapped by keen-edged swords,the king of the Swedes forced to submitto Eofor’s judgement. Anger impelledthe weapon of Wulf, son of Wonred,a blow striking - the blood sprang outstreaming through his hair.
In the final confrontation, the Geatish warrior Wulf is the first to strike. His blow draws blood, but is insufficient to fell the enemy king, who continues to fight:
Næs he forht swa ðeh,gomela Scilfing, ac forgeald hraðewyrsan wrixle wælhelm þone,syððan ðeodcyning þyder oncirde.Ne meahte se snella sunu Wonredesealdum ceorle ondslyht giofan,ac he him on heafde helm ær gescer,þæt he blode fah bugan sceolde,feoll on foldan -ll. 2967-75
Yet he feared not,the old Scylfing, but answered at oncepaid back more harshly in the havoc and uproarwhen the far-ruling king turned to face his foe.The warlike son of Wonred could notanswer the blow of the older man -it beat on his head shore through the helmso, stained with blood, he sank downdropped to the earth
And it is here, at the climax of this final action of the poem - in the last reversal among what has been a series of reversals - that we can find the closest appearance of two words for ‘giant’ in any Old English text, separated by no more than a caesura:
Let se hearda Higelaces þegnbradne mece, þa his broðor læg,ealdsweord eotonisc entiscne helmbrecan ofer bordweal; ða gebeah cyning,folces hyrde, wæs in feorh dropen. -ll. 2977-81
The hardened warrior Hygelac’s thegnswung his broad blade as his brother lay thereold sword of the ettins against entish helmbroke through the shield-wall bit to the vitalsso the king fell then folk-warden death-wounded.
It is a fitting place for giants of both types to be mentioned, as they have throughout the poem at moments of great crisis. This is the second blow Ongentheow’s helm has taken, and in these lines we can see why the first one failed – and why the second succeeded. If Ongentheow were not formidable enough, he is protected by an ‘entisc’ helmet. Wulf’s sword, which dealt the first blow, is only said to be a ‘wæpne’; but Eofor’s has ‘eotonisc’ ancestry. And as we have seen, it takes a eotonisc sword to do monstrous work.
Ongentheow is a human, but as we have seen and as several scholars have observed3, the language describing Ongentheow reveals a dragonish aspect. Having heard of Higelac’s ‘hilde’ (war, combat), he ‘oncirde’. This precise word is not used of the dragon’s behavior, but on discovering the theft of his hoard, the dragon ‘hlæw oft ymbehwearf / ealne utanweardne’ (2296-7), ‘often’ or ‘over and over moving about, all outside the barrow’, and ‘hwilum on beorh æthwearf, / sincfæt sohte’ (2299-2300) ‘now and again turned’ or ‘went’ ‘into the barrow, sought his precious cup’. The description of the dragon’s motion indicates a restless, repetitive, obsessive behavior that mirrors the back-and-forth of the Swedish campaign, in which each side in turn corners the other. Ongentheow in particular is portrayed as moving back and forth over his lands: rescuing his wife, besieging the Geats, turning to defend his stronghold on Higelac’s approach, and turning again in the final battle to face his last assailant. Like the dragon, who is said to guard his hoard ‘eald under eorðan’ (2415), ‘wintrum frod’ (2277), Ongentheow is old, wise, and supreme in his powers, guardian of his strong-place, awaiting ‘eald under eorðweall’ (2957) the Geatish intruders. He too, like the dragon, is undone by two warriors, one of whom wields an ealdsweord eotonisc: an old, trollish sword.
Another parallel: the verb ‘gebugan’ is used here, of the fall of Ongentheow, and in 1540 of the fall of Grendel’s mother that precedes her dispatch by another ealdsweord eotenisc. It also appears in quick succession in lines 2567 and 2569, where it describes the movements of the dragon – not ‘falling’ in this case, but in the word’s more literal sense, ‘bow’, or bend, as the serpent coils and draws back preparing to strike. Two other uses, less dramatic but more ominous, occur in the poem. The first, at 690, describes Beowulf’s settling down to rest prior to the attack of Grendel; the other, at 1241, the same action performed by Aeschere, ‘fus ond fæge’, rushing unknowingly to his doom at the hands of Grendel’s mother. The verb, then, is used to describe the motion of monsters struck by eotonisc swords, or of men soon to meet those monsters. Its application to Ongentheow indicates his importance as a foe of the Geats.
There is, then, something both sympathetic and monstrous about Ongentheow, the cornered king, giving a blow better than the first he received – a defender, as the poet of Brunanburh imagined the English, of hord and hamas. Ongentheow’s constant motion, both in campaign and in battle, in response to his circling enemies stands in contrast to Hrothgar’s inertia in Heorot. We see him as an old dragonish fighter, canny and dangerous, hale enough to take a blow and then hew to the ground a younger warrior like Wulf. It is as though the Geatish messenger, on viewing the dragon, has got the serpentine, coiling movements of the monster into his mind as he recalls the tale of the Swedish campaign - or has detected a similarity between the two events. The actual dragon has perished, its corpse soon shoved into the sea, but even in his presentation of an entirely human conflict, the poet cannot avoid invoking once more the monsters he has conjured. Perhaps it is better to say that it fits well one of the poet’s aims for the monstrous energies of the inhuman creatures of legend to re-emerge in a legendary human conflict.
But as we have seen, the eotenas are not the only giantish beings evoked in l. 2979. The entas appear as well, for the final time, in the figure of Ongentheow’s helmet. And just as the sword of Eofor brings to bear all the associations of the eotonisc that we have explored in this series – the sudden appearance, at a moment of physical crisis, of a weapon that allows a bloody reversal of fortune – so too the ‘entishness’ of Ongentheow’s helm is fully consistent with the other entish objects we can see not only in Beowulf but throughout much of Old English literature. Here, as with the enta geweorc seen in The Wanderer or The Ruin, we have an evidently impressive work of craft, made for defense of the king just as the walls and towers of entish buildings are made for the defense of society, which is not allowed to remain intact – and which, despite its ruination, is still held in esteem by those who behold it.
For the ‘entisc’ helm does not remain on the battlefield: Ongentheow’s gear, including his sword and mail-coat as well as the helm, is despoiled by the victor. (A form of ‘reafian’ is used both of Eofor’s plundering of Ongentheow’s corpse at 2985 and of Wiglaf’s plundering of the dragon’s hoard, 2773.) The king’s sword and mail are given no epithets; and the fact that the helmet is taken as a trophy – despite no doubt suffering damage in both Wulf’s and Eofor’s attacks – is another indication of the quality, or at least the distinctiveness, of Ongentheow’s personal helm.
The destruction of the helm is in fact significant enough for it to be presented twice: once here, in the fullest context of the war; but once earlier, by Beowulf himself, as he sits before the dragon’s barrow recounting stories about the old campaigns. He puts the events succinctly, but does not forget the detail of the helm:
Þa ic on morgen gefrægn mæg oðernebilles ecgum on bonan stælan,þær Ongenþeow Eofores niosað;guðhelm toglad, gomela Scylfinghreas heoroblac -ll. 2484-89
A kinsman came in the morning, I heard,with the edge of a sword avenged that slayer,when Ongentheow attacked Eoforthe old Scylfing’s helmet shatteredhe hurtled deathward.
Beowulf’s slaying of the dragon was a mighty deed, but in drawing a connection between the dragon and Ongentheow, the messenger illustrates the problem the Geats now face. The dragon has killed the Geatish king; the descendants of the dragonish Ongentheow will destroy the Geatish people. No one will continue the feud on the dragon’s behalf, but the store of human hatred is inexhaustible. Ongentheow, the old hoard-guardian and night-terror, is dead and his treasures rifled. But the rivalry in which his death was but a single episode is not ended.
This climactic clash between Eofor and Ongentheow is a paradigmatic encounter, played out in the meeting of sword and helm that Maxims II took to be almost a Platonic ideal:
Ecg sceal wiþ helme / hilde gebidan -ll. 16-17
In battle (hilde), the place for a sword (ecg) was against (wiþ) a helme. The outcome of that meeting, however, is not stated in Maxims II: it is not said which item must get the better of the other. When Ongentheow is attacked – first by Wulf – ‘ecgum sweorda’ (Beowulf 2961), conflict of the type enshrined in Maxims is established. And Wulf’s ordinary sword fails: he strikes so that ‘swat ædrum sprong / forð under fexe’ (2966-7), yet Ongentheow is not slain; the helm wins round one. But from the moment we see Eofor’s sword described, the outcome is clear: Eofor’s ealdsweord eotonisc must inevitably defeat Ongentheow’s entiscne helm.
Eotonisc swords, characteristically, do not fail. This is such an important aspect of their existence that, at every moment where we see a eotonisc sword in action, we are also shown a non-eotonisc sword failing. The fact that these failing swords are all given histories, and two out of the three are given names, further highlights the ability of the eotonisc to accomplish something beyond the typical limitations of the human. Hrunting is useless against Grendel’s mother; the ealdsweord eotonisc in the lair is the only weapon that will do. Naegling is a costly heirloom, but “sio ecg gewac” (the blade failed, 2577); when Wiglaf decides to help his lord, we are told that his weapon “ne … gewac aet wige” (did not fail in battle, 2628-29). Wulf’s weapon wounds Ongentheow, but not enough to prevent the old king from delivering a savage blow that almost kills Wulf himself; it takes Eofor’s eotonisc sword to fell the foe.
This tightly clustered appearance of “giant”-terms is significant, for l. 2979 is not a ‘monster catalogue’, as is ll. 111-13 (the other dense concentration of terms for non-human beings). It describes the climactic action of the episode. And in doing so, it neatly illustrates the significance and associations particular to the two giant-terms under special consideration here. The story of Ongentheow’s fall offers a grounding in the past for what will be the order of the future: a future in which Beowulf is dead, the Geats are defenseless, and old enmities will resurface. Invoking an ‘eoten’, or specifically a eotonisc thing, at this point serves very well to highlight the aggression, the inevitable victory, of Eofor and his Geats, against what we might say is the characteristic ‘entisc’ reliance on defense (Ongentheow’s fortifications helped him not at all, nor did his helmet save him in the end). It serves equally well to point up a contrast between the Geats’ past triumphs and their present anxieties. Eotonisc gear, or eotonisc fury, we might say, once aided the Geats: but now, like the entisc helm of their old foe, they in turn will suffer destruction. Entish stuff is the stuff of the past: old and strong, maybe, but not made to stand up to the passage of time or the power of a strong opponent. If it survives, it survives as a curiosity, a memento mori for figures who seem themselves rather transient.
This aspect of the past, of the age of both eotonisc and entisc things, deserves some additional comment. At first glance this association (visible in the expression ealdsweord eotonisc) would seem to render the eotenas confusingly close to the entas, who are often linked with old things themselves, either by the expression enta aergeweorc (old work of entas) or by association with old, ruined stonework.
But two of the eotonisc swords, while old, still represent a traceable and relatively recent tradition of human ownership. The swords wielded by Wiglaf and Eofor have histories going back several generations, but are not associated with forgotten buildings or crumbling walls. This stands in contrast to enta geweorc, whose histories are presented as almost unrecoverable, or recoverable only through an act of imagination.4
As for the lair-sword, while it is ancient, that ancientry is only evident when the sword has been removed from its eotonisc context and is referred to as entisc. In other words, the lair-sword in all its whole, eotonisc glory – with its huge blade, beheading both of the Grendelkin – is not associated with the past. Its history is only explored when it is broken, as a hilt, and described as entisc.
Entisc things, that is, seem particularly suited to a deep, almost inarticulable history, whereas the history of eotonisc swords lies closer to the surface. And indeed, this distinct association is reflected in the fact that all the wielders of the eotonisc swords are young, whereas many of those who come into contact with entisc things are themselves old. Beowulf in his fight with Grendel, Wiglaf in his support of the old Beowulf, and Eofor in his fight against Ongentheow – all these heroes are young. (Eofor is at least young enough not yet to be married: he is given a wife by Hygelac after the battle.) By contrast, old king Hrothgar contemplates the enta geweorc hilt, the elderly Beowulf views the enta geweorc stone arches of the dragon’s lair, and the old Ongentheow is warded by an entisc helm. The eotonisc is the province of youth; the entisc, most often, of age.
The three swords we have explored in this series have allowed us to establish a paradigmatic distinction between the uses and associations of the terms ent and eoten. But the uses were not rigid or static. Innovation was possible, and we will find it, perhaps surprisingly, in a poem that has often been seen as clumsily derivative: the Old English saintly epic Andreas. This poem’s use of enta geweorc will be the subject of forthcoming posts.
Sarah Semple (Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England) identifies around a dozen place-names with ‘thyrs’ (concentrated in the northeast), only two with ‘ent’ (an ‘enta hlew’ in Poolhampton and an ‘enta dic’ in Kings Worthy, both in Hampshire), and none with ‘eoten’.
All Old English text in this post is from Klaeber’s Beowulf, 4th ed. Translations mine.
The link between Ongentheow and the dragon has been noted by several scholars, such as John Gardner in his essay ‘Guilt and the World’s Complexity: Ongentheow’s Murder and the Slaying of the Dragon’, and in Chickering’s commentary to his translation of Beowulf (p. 373). John M. Hill states (in his Anglo-Saxon Warrior Ethic, p. 42) that Ongentheow’s “enraged behavior during the night at Ravenswood, his terrible threats, and the general context of strife and crime make this fierce king the enraged dragon’s familiar.”
It is also significant that not all heirloom or old swords are described as eotonisc. Beowulf is given a sword at several points in the poem: by Hrothgar at 1023 (“mære maðþumsweord”), by Unferth at 1455-64 (“hæftmece Hrunting nama / … an foran ealdgestreona; / ecg wæs iren, atertanum fah, / ahyrded heaþoswate”), and by Hygelac at 2190-94 (“Hreðles lafe, / golde gegyrede … sincmaðþum … on sweordes had; / þæt he on Biowulfes bearm alegde”). The Geatish boat-guard is given a sword by Beowulf at 1900-03 (“swurd ... / … maþme þy weorþra, / yrfelafe.”). Swords exchange hands many times in the poem, but only those which perform mighty deeds at times of extreme difficulty are identified as “eotonisc”.