Beowulf Notes 205 BEOWULF NOTES Site nu to symle ond on sl meoto, sige-hretS secgum, swa }nn sefa hwette (489f.) Of recent editors, Chambers prints onsal, in spite of the metrical difficulty 1 * and difficulties of interpretation ;Sedgefield resorts to radical emendations; Schiicking prints ond on ssel weota sige-hreS secgum, and translates (see glossary): "Bei gtinstiger gelegenheit (wenn die gelegenheit kommt), bestimme (verschaffe) siegruhm den leuten"; and Holthausen in his third and fourth editions prints ond on SEC! meota sigehre<5 secgum, and translates sal (see glossary to third edition) by "giinstige gelegenheit, passende zeit"; in his second edition, however, Holthausen printed Klaeber's emendation: ond, on ssel meota sigehre"5 secga, but with a difference of interpretation, for the glossary to Holthausen's second edition renders s<zl in line 489 by "giinstige gelegenheit, passende zeit," whereas Klaeber's rendering of the passage is: "Sit now down to the feast and joyfully think of victory as your heart may prompt you." lb Of the readings ^ The metrical difficulty involved in this reading is that it gives us an imperative alliterating in a second half-line containing a noun. In the 40 half-lines of Beowulf which are cited by Professor Bright (Modern Language Notes, XXXI, 218f.) as containing imperative forms bearing a metrical stress, there is none in which an imperative alliterates and a noun in the same half- line does not alliterate. Either the imperative and the noun both alliterate, or the noun alliterates and the imperative does not.
- t> JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY, VI, 193.
