Beówulf

Project Gutenberg's Beowulf, by James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
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Title: Beowulf
Author: James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9700]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of
schedule]
[This file was first posted on October 12, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEOWULF ***
Produced by Karl Hagen and PG Distributed Proofreaders
0. Preface to the Project Gutenberg Edition of Beowulf **
This text is a corrected version of the fourth edition of Harrison and Sharp in its entirety.
It comes in two basic versions. The base version, available in 8-bit (Latin-1) text and
HTML, presents the original text as printed. This file contains the original version. It
preserves the source-text's idiosyncratic use of accented vowels with the exception of
y-circumflex, which is replaced by y-acute (ý) to fit within the Latin-1 character set.
Manifestly unintentional errors in the text have been corrected. In general, this has only
been done when the text is internally inconsistent (e.g., a quotation in the glossary does
not match the main text). Forms that represent deliberate editorial choice have not been
altered, even where they appear wrong. (For example, some of the markings of vowel
length do not reflect current scholarly consensus.) Where an uncorrected problem may
confuse the reader, I have inserted a note explaining the difficulty, signed KTH. A

complete list of the changes made is appended at the end of the file. In order to make the
text more useful to modern readers, I have also produced a revised edition, available in
Unicode (UTF-8) and HTML. Notes from the source text that indicate changes adopted in
later editions have been incorporated directly into the text and apparatus. Further, long
vowels are indicated with macrons, as is the common practice of most modern editions.
Finally, the quantity of some words has been altered to the values currently accepted as
correct. Quantities have not been changed when the difference is a matter of editorial
interpretation (e.g., gäst vs. gæst in l. 102, etc.) A list of these altered quantities appears
at the end of the list of corrections. Your browser must support the Unicode character set
to use the revised version.
Explanation of the Vowel Accenting
In general, Harrison and Sharp use circumflex accents over vowels to mark long vowels.
For ash, however, the actual character 'æ' represents the long vowel. Short ash is rendered
with a-umlaut (ä). The long diphthongs (eo, ea, etc.) are indicated with an acute accent
over the second vowel (eó, eá, etc.).
0. End of PG Preface ** I. BEÓWULF:
AN ANGLO-SAXON POEM.
II. THE FIGHT AT FINNSBURH:
A FRAGMENT.
WITH TEXT AND GLOSSARY ON THE BASIS OF M. HEYNE.
EDITED, CORRECTED, AND ENLARGED, BY
JAMES A. HARRISON, LL.D., LITT. D.,
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND MODERN LANGUAGES, WASHINGTON
AND LEE UNIVERSITY,
AND
ROBERT SHARP (PH.D. LIPS.),
PROFESSOR OF GREEK AND ENGLISH, TULANE UNIVERSITY OF
LOUISIANA.
FOURTH EDITION. REVISED, WITH NOTES.
GINN & COMPANY
BOSTON--NEW YORK--CHICAGO--LONDON
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1883, by

JAMES ALBERT HARRISON AND ROBERT SHARP
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
DEDICATED
TO
PROFESSOR F. A. MARCH, OF LAFAYETTE COLLEGE, PA.,
AND
FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL, ESQ. FOUNDER OF THE "NEW SHAKSPERE
SOCIETY," THE "CHAUCER SOCIETY," ETC., ETC.
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
The favor with which the successive editions of "Beówulf" have been received during the
past thirteen years emboldens the editors to continue the work of revision in a fourth
issue, the most noticeable feature of which is a considerable body of explanatory Notes,
now for the first time added. These Notes mainly concern themselves with new textual
readings, with here and there grammatical, geographical, and archæological points that
seemed worthy of explanation. Parallelisms and parallel passages are constantly
compared, with the view of making the poem illustrate and explain itself. A few
emendations and textual changes are