FROM WULDRES HYRDE TO FOLCES HYRDE: THE MERITS OF A METAPHORICAL TRANSLATION OF HIRD- SUBSTANTIVES IN BEOWULF

Abstract

The Old English substantive hird- appears in Beowulf 17 times, 16 times in the form of a noun-plus-genitive-noun phrase and once as a compound word. It is used to describe God, conscience, four kings, four monsters, and two men. Though scholars agree that the primary signification of hird- is “a keeper of a herd or flock of domestic animals; a herdsman” (OED), none of the characters to which the word is applied is an animal herdsman. Further, each one is possessed of power and authority far in excess of that which could derive from a reference to its literal counterpart alone. In their translations of the word in Beowulf, particularly since the publication of Klaeber’s edition in 1922, translators have tended to favor transferred senses of the word (“guardian” or “keeper”) over metaphorical ones (“herdsman” or “shepherd”). Using the results of fragmentary searches of all five spellings of the substantive (hird-, hierd-, hiord-, heord-, and hyrd-) in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, I demonstrate that the use of the word in Beowulf is situated within a larger context of dominantly religious figurative use in the corpus and could be evidence of a biblical allusion that spans both the Old and New Testaments. Considering especially the references which occur in texts an Anglo-Saxon lay audience could have encountered, such as homilies, saints’s lives, and religious poetry, I encourage translators to consider the historical and cultural merits of the metaphorical translation of this word.