The NamesBēow, Scēf, ScyldandBēowulf: Shares into Swords

Abstract

Among the legendary figures in the early verses of Beowulf, it is proposed that Scyld replaced an early name for the sickle or scythe, in a martial and, in literary terms, epic development of an original agrarian triad of cereal crop (bēow “barley”), reaping instrument (sicol, síðe) and resulting sheaf of grain (scēf). In this context, the name Bēowulf is envisaged as possibly having originated in bēow-wulf “barley wolf”, on the model of German Roggenwolf, a malign spirit that attacks grain in the field. In early Britain the name may have been reinterpreted as the conventionally recognised “bee-wolf” (= bear) and assigned a very different value in the epic and aristocratic environment of the poem as defender of the community and its fields.

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