Old EnglishExodus487werbeamas

Abstract

AT a climactic moment in the Old English poem Exodus , the Red Sea crashes onto the Egyptian army that is pursuing the Israelite tribes across the seabed. The poet introduces a range of metaphors into the scene, centred on the depiction of the returning waters in terms of collapsing architecture. The lines are edited by Krapp in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records as follows (lines 482–490): 1 The current foamed, the fated ones collapsed, the sea fell onto the land, the sky was disturbed, the ramparts gave way, walls burst, the sea-towers dissolved, when the mighty one, the guardian of the heavenly kingdom, struck (on) the werbeamas with holy hand. The proud tribes could not hinder the path of those helpers, the intention of the sea-stream, but he destroyed the multitude with wailing terror. (Emphasis added). The allusive style is characteristic of the poet, and it is probable that even the Anglo-Saxon reader of the poem might have paused over this description of the action, to work out who was doing what to whom, and how. One word in this passage, werbeam (a hapax legomenon ), has caused difficulty for modern readers, concerning both the word’s place in the syntax of the passage, and its meaning. To advance the understanding of what this word is likely to mean, and the action the poet is describing, it is necessary to review the syntax of the passage, and the range of suggested meanings of the two words ( wer and beam ) compounded to form werbeam . The reconsideration of one suggested meaning, ‘beam of a weir or dam’, requires the examination of archaeological evidence for dams in Anglo-Saxon England, and the relationship between this evidence and the documentary record. Crucial to this discussion is the relationship between werbeam and the charter word beamwær (‘beam-weir’, ‘wooden-weir’).

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