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Updated: May 29, 2025
The musical effect was heightened by the harp with which the gleeman accompanied his singing.. The poetical form will be seen clearly in the following selection from the wonderfully realistic description of the fens haunted by Grendel.
The gleeman took a loaf and some strips of cold fried bacon out of his wallet and laid them upon the ground. 'I will give a tithe to the poor, says he, and he cut a tenth part from the loaf and the bacon.
Here, it is true, were none of the applicances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James;—no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman, with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy.
Such a blow he smote the fiddler upon his good helmet, that the sword's edge pierced to the very helmet bands. This the bold gleeman repaid with might; he smote Wolfhart, so that the sparks flew wide. Enow of fire they struck from the armor rings, for each bare hatred to the other. Then Knight Wolfwin of Berne did part them an' he be not a hero, never was there one.
The whole secret of Beowulf's mighty life is summed up in the last line, "Ever yearning for his people's praise." So every tribe had its scop, or poet, more important than any warrior, who put the deeds of its heroes into the expressive words that constitute literature; and every banquet hall had its gleeman, who sang the scop's poetry in order that the deed and the man might be remembered.
A general laugh followed this sally at the dentist's expense, in the midst of which the gleeman placed his battered harp upon his knee, and began to pick out a melody upon the frayed strings. "Elbow room for Floyting Will!" cried the woodmen. "Twang us a merry lilt." "Aye, aye, the 'Lasses of Lancaster," one suggested. "Or 'St. Simeon and the Devil." "Or the 'Jest of Hendy Tobias."
These had been asides, while all the company were listening to the gleeman; but now Edwy threw himself heart and soul into the current conversation, and all went merry as a marriage peal, until the ceremoniarius for Edwy loved formality in some things threw open the folding doors and announced the captain of the hus-carles, and Elfric of Aescendune.
She whipped the maids and starved the kern, And drove away the poor; "Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said, "I rue my bargain sore!" This lord he had a daughter fair, Beloved of old and young, And nightly round the shealing-fires Of her the gleeman sung. "As sweet and good is young Kathleen As Eve before her fall;" So sang the harper at the fair, So harped he in the hall.
So when the wolf hunt was over, or the desperate fight was won, these mighty men would gather in the banquet hall, and lay their weapons aside where the open fire would flash upon them, and there listen to the songs of Scop and Gleeman, men who could put into adequate words the emotions and aspirations that all men feel but that only a few can ever express: Music and song where the heroes sat The glee-wood rang, a song uprose When Hrothgar's scop gave the hall good cheer.
With this view he assumed the costume of a Saxon minstrel, and ventured into the Danish camp at Chippenham, about thirty miles distant from his stronghold among the marshes. In this disguise he went from tent to tent, and, as some of the chroniclers tell us, was admitted into the tent of Guthrum himself, the Danish leader, his quality of gleeman assuring safety even to a Saxon.
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