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An illustration of Grendel's mother by J. R. Skelton from Stories of Beowulf (1908) described as a "water-witch" trying to stab Beowulf. Grendel's mother (Old English: Grendles mōdor) is one of three antagonists in the anonymous Old English poem Beowulf (c. 700–1000 AD), the other two being Grendel and the dragon.
Beowulf tears off Grendel's arm, mortally wounding the creature. Grendel flees but dies in his marsh den. There, Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel's mother in a mere, over whom he triumphs with a sword found there. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel's corpse and removes his head, which he keeps as a trophy.
According to Gould, "the message would be clear enough to the poem's Christian audience: only God can contribute enough power to overcome enemies to whom the poem has elsewhere given a Scriptural history". [17] Grendel and Grendel's mother have such a history, as Grendel's lineage is described in lines 106–108 to have descended from Cain.
The final act of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf includes Beowulf's fight with a dragon, the third monster he encounters in the epic. On his return from Heorot, where he killed Grendel and Grendel's mother, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats and rules wisely for fifty years until a slave awakens and angers a dragon by stealing a jewelled cup from ...
The former, subtitled "Beowulf and Grendel", is a poem or song [5] of seven eight-line stanzas about Beowulf's victory over Grendel. The latter is a poem of fifteen eight-line stanzas on the same theme; several of the stanzas, including the first and the last, are almost identical with the first version.
Beowulf is an epic poem in Old English, telling the story of its eponymous pagan hero.He becomes King of the Geats after ridding Heorot, the hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, of the monster Grendel, [a] who was ravaging the land; he dies saving his people from a dragon.
In the Old English epic Beowulf, Æschere is Hrothgar's most trusted advisor who is killed by Grendel's mother in her attack on Heorot after her son's death. His name, mentioned four times in the poem, [1] is composed of the Germanic elements "æ", meaning 'ash' (and thus 'spear' [2]), and "here", meaning 'army'.
Deviating from the poem, Unferth's sword melts when Beowulf is seduced by Grendel's mother, forcing Beowulf to concoct a lie about having to leave his sword buried in Grendel's mother's corpse or else she would come back from the dead. Unferth also remains in the story until the final act.