'Last of Our Race'
Considering Brands, Swords, Fetters and Rings from Xerxes and Beowulf to Emma: 8/4/21
Last week, when napping between ditching shifts, I listened to Beowulf over and over again. The translation is that which I find most pleasing, a version with the most olden tone. Over and over again the term “brand” was used for the sword, and that the sword was the symbol of man's rule, the veritable life-taking queen [1] in the king's hand.
The chief duty of the sword king was to protect the people from monsters—a task which the swords in Beowulf failed at as often as not. The sword would also be the chief weapon of the executioner into the Modern Era.
I was struck by the whimsical declaration in Beowulf that the hero who stood by Beowulf when he died slaying the dragon—as the rest of the mailed warriors fled, was “the last of his race,” and also, that with the outward, risk-taking, monster hunting Beowulf, the sword king paramount, that the people, the race, was doomed to slavery.