Beasts of battle

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The Beasts of battle is a poetic trope in Old English and Old Norse literature. It consists of the wolf, the raven, and the eagle, traditional animals accompanying the warriors to feast on the bodies of the slain.[1] It occurs in eight Old English poems and in the Old Norse Poetic Edda.

History of the term[]

The term originates with Francis Peabody Magoun, who first used it in 1955, although the combination of the three animals was first considered a theme by Maurice Bowra, in 1952.[2]

History, content[]

The beasts of battle presumably have a common Germanic origin ; the animals are well known for eating carrion. A mythological connection may be presumed as well, though it is clear that at the time that the Old English manuscripts were produced, that the ravens and the wolves would no longer be seen in connection with Woden’s/Odin’s companions Huginn and Muninn, or Geri and Freki respectively. The Norse tradition, which displays many parallels with the Anglo-Saxon notions of animals in literature, preserved this connection between animals and the Germanic gods until a much later date.[3] Their literary pedigree is unknown. John D. Niles points out that they possibly originate in the wolf and the raven as animals sacred to Wōden; their role as eaters of the fallen victims certainly, he says, accords with the fondness of Old English poets for litotes, or deliberate understatement, giving "ironic expression to the horror of warfare as seen from the side of the losers."[4]

While the beasts have no connection to pagan mythology and theology in the Old English poems they inhabit, such a connection returns, oddly enough, in Christian hagiography: in Ælfric of Eynsham's Passio Saneti Edmundi Regis (11th century) a wolf guards the head of Saint Edmund the Martyr, and in John Lydgate's The Life of Saint Alban and Saint Amphibal (15th century), "the wolf and also the eagle, upon the explicit command of Christ, protect the bodies of the martyrs from all the other carrion beasts."[5]

Occurrences in Old English poetry[]

References[]

Notes

  1. ^ Herring.
  2. ^ Honegger 289 n.3.
  3. ^ Honegger 289-90.
  4. ^ Niles 133.
  5. ^ Honegger 290-91.

Bibliography

  • Herring, Scott (2008). "A Hawk from a Handsaw: A Note on the Beasts of 'The Battle of Brunanburh'". American Notes and Queries. 21 (1): 9–11. doi:10.3200/anqq.21.1.9-11.
  • Honegger, Thomas (1998). "Form and function: The beasts of battle revisited". English Studies. 79 (4): 289–98. doi:10.1080/00138389808599134.
  • Magoun, Francis Peabody (1955). "The Theme of the Beasts of Battle in Anglo- Saxon Poetry". . 56: 81–90.
  • Niles, John D. (2007). "Pagan survivals and popular belief". In Malcolm Godden (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature. Michael Lapidge. Cambridge UP. pp. 126–41. ISBN 978-0-521-37794-2.


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