Not far hence it is, reckoning by miles, that the Mere
standeth, and over it hang rimy groves; a wood with clenched roots
overshrouds the water." The word to be noted here is the word _rimy_,
i.e. covered with rime or hoar-frost. The original Anglo-Saxon text
has the form _hrinde_, the meaning of which was long doubtful. Grein,
the great German scholar, writing in 1864, acknowledged that he did
not know what was intended, and it was not till 1880 that light was
first thrown upon the passage. In that year Dr Morris edited, for
the first time, some Anglo-Saxon homilies (commonly known as the
_Blickling Homilies_, because the MS. is in the library of Blickling
Hall, Norfolk); and he called attention to a passage (at p. 209) where
the homilist was obviously referring to the lonely mere of the
old poem, in which its overhanging groves were described as being
_hrimige_, which is nothing but the true old spelling of _rimy_. He
naturally concluded that the word _hrinde_ (in the MS. of Beowulf) was
miswritten, and that the scribe had inadvertently put down _hrinde_
instead of _hrimge_, which is a legitimate contraction of _hrimige_.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29