0:00:07 > 0:00:11like a flame beyond the language
0:00:11 > 0:00:16and yet it still speaks to us.
0:00:23 > 0:00:31'I'm going in search of the roots of this great poem and the barbaric splendour of the world it depicts.'
0:00:31 > 0:00:35It is not fantasy. This shows what a golden reality it was.
0:00:35 > 0:00:40'It's a world caught between the Pagan and the Christian.
0:00:44 > 0:00:48If you see this monster's red,
0:00:48 > 0:00:55'It's the tale of a hero, Beowulf,
0:00:55 > 0:01:01war flashes blazed in the distance.
0:01:01 > 0:01:06a Nobel Prize-winning poet.'
0:01:11 > 0:01:14'For the first time on television,
0:01:14 > 0:01:18the priceless original manuscript.'
0:01:21 > 0:01:28Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon poetry are at the root of the great tree of English language and literature
0:01:28 > 0:01:35which has spread across the whole nation's greatest gift to the world.
0:01:57 > 0:02:11So my journey in search of Beowulf starts on the east coast of England
0:02:11 > 0:02:27who came to Britain at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire
0:02:27 > 0:02:31They were a minority. They made little influence on our DNA.
0:02:34 > 0:02:40but they had a profound effect on our society and our culture and especially our language.
0:02:52 > 0:02:57Our most commonly used words are theirs - "green", "red",
0:03:00 > 0:03:06Words that describe key concepts - "mother", "father", "friend",
0:03:06 > 0:03:09"love", "hate", "forgiveness",
0:03:15 > 0:03:21Core words that still define and our relations as human beings.
0:03:21 > 0:03:25Although Beowulf is the earliest great work of English literature,
0:03:25 > 0:03:29it's not set in Britain, it's set
0:03:29 > 0:03:33it's a post-migration tale.
0:03:36 > 0:03:42and the tenacity and affection with which they hold on to the memories
0:03:42 > 0:03:47For centuries, they clung on to the myth of their coming.
0:03:47 > 0:03:51Take the famous 10th century poem,
0:03:55 > 0:03:59"since the Angles and the Saxons came up over the broad waves".
0:04:11 > 0:04:18Part of the appeal of poetry to the Anglo-Saxons lay in the power of those ancestral stories.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24And though many centuries separate us from the original audience,
0:04:27 > 0:04:34Like so many great Hollywood adventures, Beowulf is the perennial
0:04:34 > 0:04:39the hero who fights monsters, saves his people and finds himself.
0:04:42 > 0:04:47Now, the very best way to experience Beowulf is to see it spoken live.
0:04:47 > 0:04:52to see it performed in a fantastic,
0:04:52 > 0:04:55of an Anglo-Saxon royal hall.
0:04:55 > 0:05:01It's been built here in Wychurst by the members of a historical
0:05:01 > 0:05:06Regia Anglorum, who are all hooked on the Anglo-Saxons and their world.
0:05:07 > 0:05:15Good to see you. Fantastic.
0:05:22 > 0:05:48What's not to love when you get to wear this kind of stuff?
0:05:48 > 0:05:52'The poem starts not with Beowulf himself, but with a flashback
0:06:12 > 0:06:16We have heard of the thriving
0:06:16 > 0:06:23Was it not Scyld Scefing who, found in childhood, lacked clothing?
0:06:23 > 0:06:30Yet he lived and prospered, grew in strength and stature under the heavens. That was "god cyning".
0:06:32 > 0:06:36it's a key idea in the poem.
0:06:36 > 0:06:43the Danish king Hrothgar, builds a great golden hall called Heorot,
0:06:43 > 0:06:47'but in the darkness outside lurks a malevolent spirit.'
0:06:52 > 0:06:57grim, infamous, wasteland stalker,
0:06:57 > 0:07:03He found in Heorot the nobles after carousing slept after supper.
0:07:03 > 0:07:08Mad with rage, he struck quickly, this creature evil, grim and greedy,
0:07:08 > 0:07:12warriors and away he was homeward,
0:07:16 > 0:07:22When the day broke and with the dawn's light, Grendel's outrage
0:07:24 > 0:07:29To the Anglo-Saxon audience, just a random act of terror.
0:07:29 > 0:07:33In attacking the mead hall, he was attacking society as a whole,
0:07:33 > 0:07:38for here the rituals were enacted which bound their society together.
0:07:39 > 0:07:44So the hall is a centre of not only social order, but moral order.
0:07:48 > 0:07:52the king's followers limb from limb,
0:07:57 > 0:08:04He was foremost of all the men that trod the Earth at that time.
0:08:04 > 0:08:10This prince picked his men from the flower of his folk, the fiercest
0:08:10 > 0:08:17Sea-skilled Beowulf led them down
0:08:35 > 0:08:53Now, far back in time, the story
0:09:17 > 0:09:21Now, the Beowulf story looks back
0:09:26 > 0:09:32At some point, it was written down and finally took the form we have it
0:09:35 > 0:09:38This is a big thrill for me,
0:09:38 > 0:09:43I first studied the Anglo-Saxon British Library as a student.
0:09:43 > 0:09:49But I never worked on the Beowulf
0:09:49 > 0:09:53It's never been filmed before, so this is quite an exciting moment.
0:09:54 > 0:09:57'The Beowulf manuscript was
0:09:57 > 0:10:04'in a private library, the Cotton Collection, which was devastated by fire in the 18th century.'
0:10:12 > 0:10:16What immediately becomes apparent
0:10:16 > 0:10:20In 1731, the manuscripts were housed
0:10:20 > 0:10:23in Ashburnham House in London.
0:10:23 > 0:10:26Fatefully named! Fatefully named.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30And a fire broke out and many
0:10:30 > 0:10:34A few, unfortunately, were destroyed
0:10:34 > 0:10:41of manuscripts were seen floating in the wind like butterflies.
0:10:41 > 0:10:46Yes, I remember working on one of these years ago as a student
0:10:46 > 0:10:52and the really badly burned ones,
0:10:52 > 0:10:55They're incredibly fragile,
0:10:55 > 0:10:59'In the 19th century, the damaged
0:10:59 > 0:11:04'keeping it in its original form as part of a compilation of stories,
0:11:07 > 0:11:11The compilation has all sorts of other things in it, doesn't it?
0:11:11 > 0:11:16Actually, you're turning it there
0:11:16 > 0:11:21Here we have a picture of...
0:11:21 > 0:11:27At the top, we have a headless man with his face in his chest.
0:11:31 > 0:11:38I call them "comedy camels".
0:11:38 > 0:11:40The artist mistook them for camels.
0:11:40 > 0:11:46Interesting, isn't it, these strange dragons and monsters. You can see the connection with Beowulf.
0:11:46 > 0:11:50The scribe is the same as for part of the Beowulf poem itself,
0:11:50 > 0:12:00so although this particular text doesn't have any relationship
0:12:00 > 0:12:03'It's small wonder that a tale
0:12:03 > 0:12:08this medieval monster miscellany.'
0:12:08 > 0:12:19Let's turn to the beginning of the Beowulf manuscript itself.
0:12:19 > 0:12:35"Listen up. Listen, listen."
0:12:38 > 0:12:44Here's the passage where Beowulf and his 14 companions spend the night in Hrothgar's hall,
0:12:44 > 0:12:46knowing that Grendel will return.
0:12:56 > 0:13:00Gliding through the shadows came the walker in the night.
0:13:02 > 0:13:07all except one, and this man kept
0:13:07 > 0:13:11He waited, pent heart swelling with anger against his foe.
0:13:11 > 0:13:15From off the moorlands, misting fells, came Grendel stalking.
0:13:15 > 0:13:19"Tha com of more under mistleothum
0:13:19 > 0:13:25He moved through the dark, saw with perfect clearness the gold-panelled hall, mead-drinking place of men.
0:13:25 > 0:13:31The door gave way at a touch of his hands. Rage-inflamed, wreckage-bent,
0:13:31 > 0:13:37advancing, from his eyes shot a light in unlovely form of fire.
0:13:37 > 0:13:43He saw in the hall the host of young warriors, and in his heart exulted - horrible monster -
0:13:46 > 0:13:50As a first step, he set his hands
0:13:50 > 0:13:54gnashed at his bone-joints, bolted huge gobbets, sucked at his veins,
0:13:54 > 0:13:58and had soon eaten all of the man
0:13:58 > 0:14:04He moved forward, reached to seize our warrior Beowulf, stretched out for him with his spite-filled fist.
0:14:04 > 0:14:10But, the faster man forestalling, rose up on his arm and quickly gripped that sickening hand.
0:14:12 > 0:14:15was the breath of the other.
0:14:15 > 0:14:18A rip in the giant flesh frame
0:14:18 > 0:14:23shoulder muscles sprang apart,
0:14:23 > 0:14:26the arm of the demon was severed
0:14:26 > 0:14:31and Grendel flew death-sick
0:14:34 > 0:14:40Beowulf had cleansed Heorot,
0:14:40 > 0:14:45the hero hung the hand, the arm
0:15:00 > 0:15:04To us, the basic arc of narrative in Beowulf is quite familiar.
0:15:04 > 0:15:09But around the manuscript itself there is still a real mystery.
0:15:09 > 0:15:21We don't know when or where the poem was initially composed
0:15:26 > 0:15:28there are clues to its origin.
0:15:31 > 0:15:37So first of all, to find out where the original oral poem and its poet
0:15:37 > 0:15:55I'm heading to one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in East Anglia.
0:16:01 > 0:16:07the "tun" or farm of the kings
0:16:07 > 0:16:15the ford of Wuffa "the wolf",
0:16:15 > 0:16:20is the site of the greatest
0:16:24 > 0:16:28And, of course, this is the return
0:16:28 > 0:16:34'Beowulf expert Dr Sam Newton, by the story of Sutton Hoo,
0:16:46 > 0:16:50No doubt, people would be imagining all sorts of treasure buried there,
0:16:56 > 0:17:01And then the great lady who owned the land here in the 1930s,
0:17:01 > 0:17:05who was interested in legends.
0:17:05 > 0:17:09We know she took part in the Woodbridge Spiritualist Congregation.
0:17:09 > 0:17:15And on the basis of all that, that there was gold in her hills.
0:17:15 > 0:17:20Talk about dreams come true!
0:17:23 > 0:17:27'Edith Pretty's dreams centred on several mysterious mounds
0:17:31 > 0:17:34'"Hoo" meaning "promontory"
0:17:34 > 0:17:40'In 1938, she finally approached local archaeologist Basil Brown
0:17:44 > 0:17:50When I came over, I met Mrs Pretty and walked down to the mounds
0:18:03 > 0:18:08helped by the local gamekeeper and by Mrs Pretty's gardener.
0:18:08 > 0:18:14Driving a trench from the east end of the mound, they traced rows of ship rivets still in position.
0:18:26 > 0:18:29an Anglo-Saxon ship burial.
0:18:30 > 0:18:36And it lay beneath the exact spot
0:18:48 > 0:18:52And the stern right out there. So this is the ship length. Exactly.
0:18:52 > 0:18:59The line of the keel is something like 90 feet. That's a massive ship,
0:19:02 > 0:19:08And it brings with it the notion of embarkation in a journey,
0:19:08 > 0:19:29hence the effort of bringing this massive ship, six tons at least,
0:19:29 > 0:19:33And there they laid out their lord
0:19:36 > 0:19:41A mound of treasures from far countries was fetched aboard her
0:19:41 > 0:19:47and no boat was ever more bravely fitted out with the weapons of a warrior, swords and body armour.
0:19:58 > 0:20:02the ancestral treasures? Yeah.
0:20:02 > 0:20:08And that's in the poem, isn't it, in Beowulf? "Peodgestreona",
0:20:08 > 0:20:10Fantastic. The crown jewels.
0:20:27 > 0:20:32but the extraordinary treasures buried with him caused a sensation.
0:20:33 > 0:20:40Yes, because this has opened up a lost chapter of English history.
0:20:40 > 0:20:46But had an extraordinary impact on the study of Beowulf too.
0:20:46 > 0:20:50It is not fantasy. This shows what a golden reality it was.
0:20:50 > 0:20:55Yeah, I mean, the poet describes these kind of talismanic artefacts
0:20:55 > 0:20:59with a kind of magical power,
0:21:02 > 0:21:08and you think it's just a poet
0:21:14 > 0:21:20this literally fabulous piece revealed more close connections
0:21:22 > 0:21:27Look at this awesome face, Michael. So fantastic, isn't it? It is.
0:21:27 > 0:21:34You see the boars' heads there with the boars' tusks. Exactly located as in the Beowulf description.
0:21:34 > 0:21:37"Eoforlic scionon ofer hleorberan."
0:21:40 > 0:21:51of the war-minded warriors.
0:21:51 > 0:22:24that no helmet without a boar head
0:22:24 > 0:22:37of the East Anglian royal family,
0:22:37 > 0:22:43And we can identify the Danish queen Wealthow as an East Anglian
0:22:43 > 0:22:47And the name of one of her children,
0:22:47 > 0:22:51is listed in the upper reaches of the East Anglian royal pedigree.
0:22:51 > 0:22:55And as a royal name, you don't get it in any other early source. Wow!
0:22:55 > 0:23:00This suggests then that the author
0:23:00 > 0:23:03of the East Anglian royal family.
0:23:03 > 0:23:08It's a rather unavoidable conclusion.
0:23:08 > 0:23:15It might suggest that Beowulf at some stage went through a stage of composition here in East Anglia.
0:23:17 > 0:23:22Very appropriately, we're just crossing the parish boundary
0:23:26 > 0:23:30a "kingly town", a Kingston no less.
0:23:33 > 0:23:37I think these links that Sam argues are persuasive and exciting.
0:23:37 > 0:23:42the world of the Beowulf poet.
0:23:45 > 0:23:50The area by the later medieval church of St Gregory at Rendlesham
0:23:53 > 0:23:57where the East Anglian kings might have listened to their court poets.
0:24:01 > 0:24:05So when we talk about a royal residence in the 7th century,
0:24:05 > 0:24:09we're talking about all the service
0:24:09 > 0:24:13the metalworkers, maybe those who made the jewellery at Sutton Hoo.
0:24:13 > 0:24:17And of course, most central of all,
0:24:22 > 0:24:28a great barn-like structure, the Camelot of the north, this ideal of which this would be a reality.
0:24:28 > 0:24:32And in it the poets entertain
0:24:32 > 0:24:38telling tales of... No feast is complete without the poets telling
0:24:40 > 0:24:43within this immediate area.
0:24:43 > 0:24:46All the indications are here.
0:24:46 > 0:24:53Now, it came into his mind that he would command the construction
0:24:53 > 0:24:56a house greater than men on Earth
0:24:56 > 0:25:01had bestowed on him upon its floor
0:25:01 > 0:25:05There was music of the harp,
0:25:18 > 0:25:25A possible East Anglian origin not only in the Sutton Hoo treasure
0:25:25 > 0:26:08and the family tree of the kings.
0:26:08 > 0:26:12of monstrous marsh dwellers
0:26:12 > 0:26:18Their weapons were different, but the saint and the hero inhabit
0:26:19 > 0:26:22Don't forget, Anglo-Saxon England,
0:26:22 > 0:26:26was a wild and underpopulated land.
0:26:26 > 0:26:30Forests were full of wolves.
0:26:38 > 0:26:41were little centres of human life
0:26:41 > 0:26:44amidst a vast untamed nature.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48Their mental world was surrounded
0:26:48 > 0:26:51And the unseen to them was palpable
0:26:51 > 0:26:56and always threatened to burst over the threshold into the real.
0:26:56 > 0:27:00And in the story of Beowulf, after the killing of Grendel,
0:27:00 > 0:27:03the next eruption from the demonic,
0:27:07 > 0:27:12and maybe to ours still too,
0:27:12 > 0:27:17even more threatening because it was female - Grendel's mother.
0:27:23 > 0:27:30..now purposed, black-hearted, gluttonous on a wrath-bearing visit
0:27:30 > 0:27:33and fate swept on its wheel
0:27:33 > 0:27:36when the mother of Grendel found
0:27:36 > 0:27:41She grasped a man quickly -
0:27:41 > 0:27:46clutched into herself and was away to the fen. Beowulf was not there.
0:27:49 > 0:27:52Grendel's hand had gone with her!
0:27:59 > 0:28:05an honoured place in horror stories.
0:28:07 > 0:28:10Grendel's mother may be fearsome,
0:28:10 > 0:28:14but she still feels a mother's bond
0:28:14 > 0:28:19And to the poet, that's even a source of imaginative sympathy.
0:28:22 > 0:28:24She's a perverse mirror to mankind.
0:28:27 > 0:28:31that connection for his audience
0:28:36 > 0:28:41In the poem, Grendel and his kin are described as "the seed of Cain".
0:28:41 > 0:28:47That's the son of Adam in the Bible who had committed the primordial
0:28:47 > 0:29:08for which he and his descendants would be cast out for ever, exiled,
0:29:08 > 0:29:31It hardly needs translating,
0:29:31 > 0:29:33Today they call them grindles.
0:29:36 > 0:29:43of a Grendel-like fen monster, as an enemy of Christianity,
0:29:43 > 0:29:46is one that has also hung on here.
0:29:46 > 0:29:54I've come to the medieval church of Blythburgh to meet a local
0:30:04 > 0:30:08than 100 houses in Blythburgh
0:30:08 > 0:30:11and yet this fantastic big place.
0:30:11 > 0:30:18Of course, there was a monastery. The time of Beowulf. Yes, yes.
0:30:18 > 0:30:21So what's the legend of this place,
0:30:26 > 0:30:34the thunderstorm is when you expect Wotan and his wild hunt to descend.
0:30:34 > 0:30:40Anglo-Saxon word, isn't it?
0:30:45 > 0:30:49So it's a devil dog. Black and shaggy, saucer-like burning eyes.
0:30:49 > 0:30:55with the light, baleful eyes.
0:30:55 > 0:31:02Doesn't like the sound of singing, Just like demons in the fens. Yes.
0:31:09 > 0:31:15They die because the belief is that if you look into those eyes,
0:31:15 > 0:31:17If not then, within 12 months.
0:31:17 > 0:31:24He charges through. I've got to show you - you're going to love this.
0:31:24 > 0:31:29So Black Shuck goes through
0:31:29 > 0:31:33The north door belongs to the devil, as far as East Anglia folklore goes.
0:31:33 > 0:31:38This is where his claw marks
0:31:38 > 0:31:41They've been there a very long time.
0:31:41 > 0:31:48The East Anglian tourist board in Tudor times really got to work! Fantastic. Believe it or not.
0:31:50 > 0:31:55'By Tudor times, bogeys like Black
0:31:55 > 0:32:01'but the Anglo-Saxons believed in the reality of supernatural forces that could only be defeated
0:32:01 > 0:32:12'by magic, whether by the cross or by the sword of the hero.
0:32:16 > 0:32:20among the armour on the wall,
0:32:23 > 0:32:29This wonder was so enormous that no other man would be equal
0:32:29 > 0:32:33that had fashioned it so well.
0:33:11 > 0:33:18of forging them must have seemed like a kind of spell working.
0:33:24 > 0:33:31people today who know how to forge
0:33:39 > 0:33:46You can see why ancient societies thought the smith was a magician.
0:33:46 > 0:33:52into the early iron working
0:33:52 > 0:33:57from the gods. It literally came
0:34:02 > 0:34:06and he's using earth, he's using
0:34:06 > 0:34:12he's using all the elements to create magical pieces of work.
0:34:17 > 0:34:21and extraordinary artefact.
0:34:30 > 0:34:37the swordsmith would first make
0:34:37 > 0:34:42'then twist them, weld them
0:34:42 > 0:34:47'It was the twisting of the rods which gave each Anglo-Saxon sword its individual personality,
0:34:47 > 0:34:52'creating intricate patterns
0:35:00 > 0:35:05And you see the pattern in it.
0:35:16 > 0:35:23You see something into their world when you look into these patterns.
0:35:25 > 0:35:38Then Halfdane's son presented Beowulf with a gold standard
0:35:38 > 0:35:43that was both precious object
0:35:48 > 0:36:10'So the poem's world and its honoured heroes were pagan.
0:36:10 > 0:36:18'lies at the very heart of the poem,
0:36:23 > 0:36:29'To find out, I'm travelling to the north-east to what was the ancient kingdom of Northumbria.
0:36:31 > 0:36:35'In early Anglo-Saxon times,
0:36:35 > 0:36:40'was the intellectual powerhouse
0:36:46 > 0:36:52When I'm in the north-east, I try to make the trip to a small former mining and shipbuilding village
0:36:52 > 0:36:59on the south bank of the Tyne.
0:37:02 > 0:37:06He called it The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation.
0:37:11 > 0:37:16it throws fascinating light
0:37:31 > 0:37:38But this is one of the most resonant landscapes in British history.
0:37:38 > 0:37:45monastic site - a promontory
0:37:50 > 0:37:57and, right below us, the River Don, now a blackened, industrial stream,
0:37:57 > 0:38:03And behind me, where the petrol and the ranks of Nissan cars,
0:38:03 > 0:38:10was a huge tidal pool, Jarrow Slake. It comes from a good Old English
0:38:10 > 0:38:13as in, to slake your thirst.
0:38:18 > 0:38:24Looking at the Slake today, you might think Bede's landscape
0:38:24 > 0:38:30but the remains of his monastery are still here. This is one of the root places of Englishness.
0:38:42 > 0:38:53what survives of the Anglo-Saxon
0:38:53 > 0:39:11There's a wonderful story of him survivors of an outbreak of plague,
0:39:11 > 0:39:17the conversion of the pagan English was pretty straightforward.
0:39:17 > 0:39:21'Great kings would see the divine
0:39:21 > 0:39:25'and their nobles and their people
0:39:25 > 0:39:38'In reality, the conflict between Christianity and paganism was long and never conclusively won.'
0:39:38 > 0:39:44Look at this. It's a letter from a Northumbrian cleric,
0:39:44 > 0:39:53at the monks' feasts and the popularity of poems like Beowulf.
0:39:57 > 0:40:03The word of God should be read in the communal feasts of the monks,
0:40:06 > 0:40:14"What has Ingel to do with Christ?" Ingel is a hero in Beowulf.
0:40:14 > 0:40:20It almost sounds as if it's an attack on Beowulf itself, doesn't it? And here's the punchline.
0:40:20 > 0:40:27"The House of Christ is narrow," and cannot include both -
0:40:27 > 0:40:31the works of the church fathers and the poems of the pagan poets.
0:40:38 > 0:40:44'But, as so often in history,
0:40:44 > 0:40:50the very voice of the early English,
0:40:52 > 0:40:57I've come to this remote corner of Dumfriesshire in Scotland
0:40:57 > 0:41:01Northumbria in Anglo-Saxon times
0:41:01 > 0:41:07to find one of the most interesting
0:41:10 > 0:41:15the Protestant Reformation,
0:41:15 > 0:41:21this monument was deemed idolatrous and in the 17th century it was broken up by zealous Presbyterians
0:41:21 > 0:41:26and pieces were thrown into a pit. But later still it was reassembled.
0:41:49 > 0:41:54It's an Anglo-Saxon preaching cross,
0:41:54 > 0:41:59When it was made, imagine bright colours - reds and purples,
0:42:11 > 0:42:18and drying it with her hair.
0:42:18 > 0:42:40Come and have a look round the side.
0:42:40 > 0:43:01by the treading down of serpents and dragons, basilisks and lions.
0:43:05 > 0:43:12'They quote from a poem which, after Beowulf, is one of the greatest
0:43:12 > 0:43:17'It's called The Dream of the Rood
0:43:17 > 0:43:22'were carried down to enrich
0:43:22 > 0:43:25'and even to help conversion.'
0:43:28 > 0:43:33The poem takes the form of a dream
0:43:33 > 0:43:37He has the vision in the night and it's an incredibly archaic idea.
0:43:42 > 0:43:48to gain their secret knowledge for the benefit of humankind.
0:43:48 > 0:43:52It's an idea that is thousands of years older than Christianity.
0:43:58 > 0:44:02I will tell the best of dreams
0:44:08 > 0:44:13I dreamt I saw a wondrous tree towering in the sky above me,
0:44:17 > 0:44:22And then that most beautiful of trees spoke these words,
0:44:23 > 0:44:31"Long ago it was, I still remember. I stood on the edge of the forest when they came to cut me down.
0:44:31 > 0:44:36"Strong foes carried me away
0:44:36 > 0:44:43"And then the young hero, Christ, firm and unflinching, stripped himself, brave in the sight of all,
0:44:54 > 0:44:59lamenting the King's death."
0:45:02 > 0:45:08victorious even in his defeat.
0:45:08 > 0:45:13And the tree takes on the persona of a loyal member of the war band.
0:45:13 > 0:45:19the same word as in Beowulf.
0:45:19 > 0:45:26But the tree, out of loyalty the instrument of his death.
0:45:28 > 0:45:33By equating the pagan tree of life
0:45:33 > 0:45:47something uniquely English,
0:45:55 > 0:46:01the war band, speaking trees
0:46:01 > 0:46:15just as in Beowulf you've got Holy God, the creator of the world,
0:46:16 > 0:46:26It's been said that the Christianity in Beowulf is just a veneer,
0:46:26 > 0:46:30and allowed the old world to live on
0:46:30 > 0:46:36After all, to them the pagan past,
0:46:44 > 0:46:51Exalting, the Lord established the Sun and the Moon as lamps
0:46:51 > 0:46:59loaded the acres of the world with branch and leaf, bringing to life each creature that creeps and moves.
0:47:01 > 0:47:08And so we come to the poem's
0:47:08 > 0:47:12Beowulf is the king of his people,
0:47:16 > 0:47:2150 winters he ruled, grew grey in guardianship of the land,
0:47:24 > 0:47:31in the pitch-black nighttime.
0:47:31 > 0:47:38in a towering stone burial mound.
0:47:41 > 0:47:45When he saw the dragon there,
0:47:45 > 0:47:49but even so stole from thence
0:47:52 > 0:47:58His treasure hoard violated, the enraged dragon lays waste
0:47:58 > 0:48:04Even the royal hall is destroyed,
0:48:11 > 0:48:17The Anglo-Saxons had a vivid sense of living in an old landscape
0:48:17 > 0:48:22with prehistoric long barrows
0:48:24 > 0:48:29The great stone circles, to their
0:48:29 > 0:48:31wondrous work of wall stones.
0:48:31 > 0:48:37And the ancient Stone Age burial mounds were heathen burials,
0:48:37 > 0:48:44places where the ancestral treasures
0:48:48 > 0:48:53Weyland was the Anglo-Saxon
0:48:53 > 0:49:00the man who created the magical swords and coats of chain mail
0:49:02 > 0:49:19under a cloud-flecked sky, it still feels like a place of mystery.
0:49:19 > 0:49:49And local legends have hung around this Oxfordshire long barrow
0:50:00 > 0:50:04and spoke encouraging words to the friends of his hearth,
0:50:04 > 0:50:08but gloomy were his spirits,
0:50:40 > 0:50:46'That ruminative, fatalistic quality I think is the key to Beowulf.
0:50:46 > 0:50:52'In 1999, a new translation appeared
0:50:52 > 0:50:56sellers and won Book of the Year
0:50:56 > 0:51:00'and captured the imagination
0:51:00 > 0:51:05'It was written by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney.
0:51:05 > 0:51:11'For Heaney, even the dragon itself
0:51:11 > 0:51:16it's full of sinuous energy.
0:51:20 > 0:51:26He has been attacked himself, provoked, and he has to follow
0:51:26 > 0:51:34They go around and burn villages. He's not a malignant figure
0:51:39 > 0:51:42The poem's about tests, in many ways.
0:51:47 > 0:51:50And the first two are warrior tests.
0:51:50 > 0:51:57But I do feel that the third one is somehow more of a spiritual test
0:51:57 > 0:52:05It calls to something in the reader. There's a sense of having to live up
0:52:17 > 0:52:26the one young warrior who has the courage to stand by his king.
0:52:26 > 0:52:31Attacked once again, fire flashing,
0:52:31 > 0:52:36crushed all his neck between bitter fangs. Wiglaf, disregarding the head,
0:52:36 > 0:52:46struck below it, aimed true,
0:53:11 > 0:53:16His wound burned and swelled. The vein boiled in his chest.
0:53:16 > 0:53:20sat down on a ledge and surveyed.
0:53:31 > 0:53:39Keats talked about a poem rising and setting and I think that is rather beautiful in Beowulf.
0:53:39 > 0:53:46As the poem proceeds, there is the development of the central character, Beowulf himself,
0:53:46 > 0:53:52who comes on as a young man,
0:53:58 > 0:54:05who is schooled by the pains
0:54:05 > 0:54:11Something like that happens and a beautiful transformation occurs
0:54:23 > 0:54:29The Anglo-Saxon melancholy merges with, I think, the whole European
0:54:29 > 0:54:32And that's what I loved about it.
0:54:32 > 0:54:39We've almost reached the end of the tale, but before that
0:54:39 > 0:54:45Where might the poem have been finally committed to writing
0:54:47 > 0:54:53The poem, remember, was originally composed in the Anglian dialect
0:54:53 > 0:55:00but in the form in that manuscript it's gone through a final versioning by a scribe writing in West Saxon.
0:55:07 > 0:55:12in the manuscript in London -
0:55:12 > 0:55:20weird tribes across to the sunset,
0:55:20 > 0:55:26the Wonders of the East with its story of peoples whose heads
0:55:27 > 0:55:33There's only one Anglo-Saxon monastery which is known to have possessed all of the Latin sources
0:55:33 > 0:55:40on the borders of Wessex and Mercia,
0:55:40 > 0:55:46and long tradition of vernacular
0:55:46 > 0:55:54a healthy interest in dragons, too.
0:55:54 > 0:55:59that the story reached its final
0:55:59 > 0:56:05handed down from the mouths
0:56:07 > 0:56:39It's a miracle it survived.
0:56:39 > 0:56:43The Geat race then raised up
0:56:43 > 0:56:47shining mail and shields of war
0:56:47 > 0:56:54They laid out in the middle the body of their chief and on top kindled the biggest funeral fire.
0:56:58 > 0:57:04consumed the house of bone.
0:57:04 > 0:57:08Heaven swallowed the smoke.
0:57:12 > 0:57:19This was the manner of the mourning of the Geats. They said he had proved, of all kings in the world,
0:57:46 > 0:57:51as a noble pagan ancestor should,
0:57:51 > 0:57:56but with virtue and a morality that his Christian descendants
0:58:04 > 0:58:10And now in the 21st century and clashes of civilisations
0:58:10 > 0:58:13the poem can still speak to us
0:58:13 > 0:58:19the refinement of its manners,
0:58:19 > 0:58:26at however great a distance,
0:58:26 > 0:58:30Ironical, self-deprecating,
0:58:30 > 0:58:35that the poem will be remembered
0:58:54 > 0:58:58for Red Bee Media Ltd - 2009