Backlisted - Beowulf

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

It's our Hallowe'en special ! For this year’s Hallowe’en episode our subject is the Old English poem, Beowulf, composed somewhere in England more than a thousand years ago. The atmospheric tale of supernatural monsters and human heroes has inspired scores of translations over the centuries and we will discuss several, including versions by Seamus Heaney, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Morpurgo and the powerful new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley (the 2007 computer-animated film adaptation by Robert Zemeckis and Neil Gaiman also makes an appearance). Andy and John are joined by regular Backlisted Hallowe’en guest Andrew Male, the senior associate editor of MOJO magazine, and Dr Laura Varnam, who first appeared on our last Hallowe’en episode to discuss Daphne Du Maurier’s collection, The Breaking Point. As well as being a Du Maurier expert, Laura is also the Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College, Oxford and teaches Beowulf to undergraduates. Before that, to put everyone in a suitably spooky mood, we all discuss stories taken from Robert Shearman’s remarkable experiment in storytelling, We All Hear Stories in the Dark.Timings: (may differ due to variable advert length)6'54 - We all hear stories in the Dark by Robert Shearman19'49 - Beowulf* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Played by the Edison Concert Band Every year I have to look in my sent emails to see if I can find that. That's a 2020 remix. I'm sure eagle-eared listeners will have spotted it was a bit different to the last version. But anyway, hello, Laura. Hello, Andrew. Hello. Hello. It's traditional at this point in down the line backlist is that we ask you where you're calling from. Laura, where are you? I am in my office in University College Oxford on the High Street. The College of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Andy. Oh, yes.

I've changed my middle name by deed poll to Bysshe. So I now need to be known as Andy Bysshe Miller. I've now caught up with the Simon Sharma that inspired you to do that. It's very good, isn't it? I imagine you would change your name to John Bysshe Mitchinson if only I hadn't beaten you to it. Yeah, Mask of Anarchy. What a great, great poem. Oh, fabulous.

That series is fantastic. It is. Absolutely fantastic. Where's Andrew Mayall, though? He's in the darkest depths of South Norwood. So soon in a backlist did we get the Croydon connection. Yeah, absolutely. Just down the road from Arthur Conan Doyle's house,

just up the road from Raymond Chandler's house. And not that far from the house that Emil Zola spent those happy months, not so happy months. It's pure backlisted. Putting everybody at ease. Is everybody relaxed now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's crack on. We've so much ease. Is everybody relaxed now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's crack on. We've so much to get through today. Right, John, off you go. Hello and welcome to this Halloween edition of Backlisted, the podcast that breathes life

into the ghosts of old books. Today, you find us in the half-remembered past of heroes, in a mead hall high and horn-gabled, sitting at benches groaning with ale flagons, brave sword-bearers, stout-hearted and soothed by the sweet song of bards, while outside, on the mist-wreathed moor, slinks a demon, grim and greedy, the shepherd of sin, in search of a full-bellied feast. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of sin, in search of a full-bellied feast.

I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And welcome to this year's Halloween Backlisted. Hooray! Welcome to this year's Halloween Backlisted. Hooray. And we have not one revenant this year in the shape of the Canterville man who haunts this strand, Andrew Mayle,

but also Laura Varnum, who was with us last year. Hello, Laura. Hello, Andrew. Hello. Hello. So Laura first appeared on our last Halloween Backlisted, episode 102, which was about Daphne du Maurier's story collection, The Breaking Point. Laura is the lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature at University College Oxford, a fact which has added to the terror I have felt preparing for this episode of Backlisted.

I'm looking forward to this tutorial, Andy, let me tell you. Most humiliating viva ever. She teaches medieval texts to the undergrads at the university, but in her writing and research, she wears two hats. One of her hats is a medieval one. She's published a book on the medieval church and is the co-editor of a new book of essays on the mystic marjorie kemp yay while her other hat is decidedly modern as she is currently writing a book on that's right she's still writing a book on daphne du maurier i am indeed and she is joined

of course by our very own mr halloween our very own Peter Pumpkinhead, Andrew Mayall, back for his and our fifth celebration of ghosts, ghouls, ghasts and the unheimlich. In fact, Andrew's surely only just recovered from being on Doing the Inheritors by William Golding a couple of months ago. So thanks for coming back so soon. Oh, no, it's a pleasure. Andrew is the Senior Associate Editor of Mojo magazine

and writes about film, books and TV for The Guardian, Sight and Sound and The Sunday Times. And the book, if you can call it a book, we have chosen this year, is not just a supernatural tale of humans and monsters, but the tale, the urtext for the Eve of All Hallows, the oldest English poem composed over a thousand years ago, somewhere in England by someone who may or may not have been

repurposing older poems about a mighty hero. Yes, folks, it's Beowulf time. Hooray! I think Laura's going to give you a C plus for that. But why? Why Beowulf? But why Beowulf? We should get a bit of background on why we're doing Beowulf actually. Or there's a specific reason why we're doing Beowulf.

Laura, do you want to tell the listeners what happened a year ago this very night? Indeed. So we just finished recording the Daphne du Maurier episode and we were down the pub and we got chatting all things Beowulf and Old English since I've been teaching those texts to my undergraduates that week. And the idea emerged that talking about Beowulf at Halloween would be an excellent one.

I seem to remember you attempted to say, you know, I'd be happy to come back if you ever want to talk about beowulf and me and mitch went me and mitch went let's do it for halloween yes let's do it for halloween and what a lot of water has passed under the bridge over the last year but i must say i've spent all of the awful year 2020 looking forward to this the following hour or so that we're about to spend it seems even more appropriate than it did a year ago. The sense of, you know, darkness encroaching upon civilisation. Now we're talking.

Keep it light. Keep it bright. Here we are huddled in our mead hall. Exactly. Exactly. But listen, before we plunge into the frost fringed mirror of the poem. You enjoyed writing this stuff this time. Of course I did. Andy, what have we all been reading this week? All right. So I've been reading a book on and off for the last few months, which is extremely Halloween friendly and also extremely backlisted listener friendly.

friendly, and also extremely backlisted listener friendly. I can't think of a book of clever, funny, scary, disturbing, horrifying short stories more likely to appeal to backlisted listeners than the 100 stories, possibly more, contained in Robert Shearman's amazing book, We All Hear Stories in the Dark. And I'm going to say immediately from the beginning, this book is 1,759 pages long. You can only order it directly from PS Publishing in Yorkshire, pspublishing.co.uk, and their website informs me it weighs 2.33 kilograms. So you're getting a lot of book. It's published as three separate volumes. And I'm just going to read you in backlisted style

because nobody wrote a blurb for Beowulf in a thousand years ago that we know of. It's not come to light anyway. So I'm going to read you the... Actually, Andy, the big reveal. No, I'm kidding. Oh, okay, all right. What an exclusive that would be.

I'll just read you the blurb on volume one of We Hit All His Stories in the Dark because this does sum up perfectly what this book is. An old woman sits in the dark. She has 101 stories to tell you. They are the last stories in existence. But the route through them is challenging. Each tale branches into multiple paths dependent upon the choices you make. Navigate your way through a labyrinth of colliding and contrasting tales. A brand new

Arabian Nights except this time Scheherazade isn't spinning yarns to save her own life. Follow the right path and win your wife back from the dead. There are fairy tales and myths, adventure stories, horror stories, comedies and tragedies, fantasies and fables and realist tales of modern life. Some of the stories are funny and some are moving. Some of them are frightening. Most of them are very, very strange. And that's true. And the reason why i think backlisted listeners would absolutely love this book i've read about a third of the stories i've i'm on my third attempt i've been thrown out of the book twice so far because if you choose the wrong story rob has

structured it in a way like a choose your own adventure that you get binned and you have to go back to the beginning um it's a book about books listeners it's really a book about well it's a book about many things but it's actually a book about reading and books and the setup in the prologue which i shared with everybody here today makes explicit the idea that the guy is reading and the way Rob defines reading is after a while how you feel about one book is conditioned by how the you feel about the previous book and on and on and actually in the true in true backlisted style it's all one book it's all one book but what happens when you've read all the books? That is the question posed by We All Hear Stories in the Dark. Now, Andrew's here today. Andrew first came onto Backlisted to do a Halloween show

to talk about the author Robert Aikman. There's a story, story number 82 in We All Hear Stories in the Dark is called Bobbo, and I'm just going to read the beginning of that story. And then I'm going to hand over to Andrew Mayle for his expert opinion. Bobbo. I'm not saying I'm a better writer than Robert Aikman, but when you read my horror stories, you at least can tell what's going on. If I say it's a vampire story, you'll have no doubt who the vampire is. If it's set in a haunted house, you'll be guaranteed spooks and ghouls aplenty.

When I first read Aikman, many years ago now, I didn't even realise it was horror to start with. A friend at school had got hold of one of his collections and he'd read the book and loved it, and was so desperate for me to read the book too that he actually stood over me as I did so. He was literally bouncing from foot to foot and studying my face for a reaction. Isn't he brilliant? He asked every time I paused to turn over yet another page of unedifying prose. Isn't he the best writer ever? Maybe the fault is mine. I do accept that possibility. Maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough to appreciate his clever, clever stories. Maybe I'm just not sophisticated enough to appreciate his clever,

clever stories. Maybe I'm just a moron and don't deserve Robert Aikman. And I'm fairly sure that Aikman and I would never have been friends when I wade through this stuff. And God, it's like wading through treacle. I can imagine him standing there with his arms folded and he's judging me. And all these cronies are sneering at his side and pointing and having a good laugh. Aikman clearly took the horror story very seriously. He wrote, it does seem to derive its power from what is most deep and what is most permanent. It is allied to poetry. What an arsehole. Poetry. What an arsehole.

So, Andrew, that is one of the hundred or more stories in We All Hear Stories in the Dark. What did you make of that one? Well, I think what I would like to say is that that was the reason why I bought the book. You sent me a little clipping of that story. And so I immediately ordered it. And I should say, if anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that my wife died in April. And the first page that you come to in We All Hear Stories in the Dark,

before the stories begin, reads, once upon a time, there was a man who lost his wife and tried to find her by reading all the books in the world. Now, there's a version of me who would have stopped reading right there and said, I don't want to continue with this book because that's what happened to me. But I carried on reading. And the thing that I noticed is that these were stories about what I was going through. These are stories about grief. They're stories about loss. They're stories about depression, that Shearman was dealing with something similar,

but different to what I was dealing with. And the amazing thing about them is, to what I was dealing with. And the amazing thing about them is when I began reading the stories, he gives you this option to go darker or lighter. So do you want to choose a lighter story or choose a comic story? Or do you want to choose something darker, more terrifying? Who I was at the time that I started reading the book, I kept wanting to go darker. And normally a writer wouldn't be able to satisfy that, but Shearman does, until I got to the point where the story was so dark, I thought, no, I want to read something light now. And I chose a story about a cat

that has memorized the works of Homer. And I dislike comic stories. And I was laughing, something I never do when I read, I was laughing out loud. Shearman had made me laugh in the midst of all this. And what I realized is that the way Shearman writes is kind of how you process grief. You obsess over the minutiae you take a a ring or a an old birthday card that has been written and you can you know you you can look into it you know you can see that message in it and that can send you spiraling ever downward and shaman writes at some point he says um his stories are the familiar examined under the magnifying glass until it becomes strange. And that's what mourning is.

That's what you're doing. You're taking these prosaic things, these tiny details of a life that you have lost, and you are examining them and they cause you to cry and they cause you to break apart. And what I'd realised in reading this book is that I was reading my version of the book. So Shearman had written it for me. The path I was taking through it was only my path. No one else will take that path through it. And the fact that I will never finish it means that it it will always be with me yeah yeah yeah Andrew Roberts says something very similar in the prologue yeah he says whoever you

are reading this book there's only one version of it for you and it's whichever version you happen to be reading right now but the remarkable thing was that you could pick up this book just to read a set of short stories, but I picked it up at the darkest point in my life. And it's a book about a man who loses his wife and finds something through the process of reading. And that's what I was doing as well. It's absolutely astonishing.

I think I told you I've not been able to read unless it's for work. I've not been able to read really until, since I lost my job in 2016, but especially after I lost Colette. Reading should be this curative, this balm, this thing that helps you through. And I wasn't able to do it until I started reading Robert Shearman. It's just, I think it's, it's become one of the most important books in my life and also utterly brilliant as an exercise in terror, you know, and how to scare and how to

write a ghost story. You know, not only is it masterfulful on that front it's also a book that will will never leave me it's incredible i just need to say thank you to robert yeah thanks robert if you are listening let's go to laura laura i sent you some of these stories i've sent you and john some of these stories and i sent them pretty much blind to you, right? Yeah. What did you make of what you read? Just extraordinary. I was hooked immediately from the prologue and just thought this is so imaginative and powerful and deeply moving. I printed them out. I was at my desk. I was in the middle of teaching preparation, picked up the prologue and just thought, well, I'll just have a look. And I couldn't put it down. Could not put it down.

One of the most inventive, exciting, terrifying, stomach churning sets of stories I've read this year. I'm absolutely going to read more of them. Anyone listening to this who hasn't already now bought this book, what is wrong with you? Right? PSPublishing.co.uk hey and and speaking of Halloween and uh pumpkins as we have was it the was it pumpkin kids which

you found very disturbing do you know it wasn't it it was you you're weirdo well I mean i did but i did um but the one the one that i just found absolutely sort of disgusting and made just made me squeal at my desk um was was the one called um thumb sucker oh yeah it starts my father has become a thumb sucker i know it took me by surprise too. Well, it certainly took me by surprise. I was squealing in horror at my desk, really. Mitch, last word to you. What did you think? It's magnificent. And thank you, Andrew, for such an amazing response to the book. This is deep marrow narrative. I mean, this is like storytelling. I loved all the stories. Thumbsucker also disturbed me because I used to suck my thumb as a kid. And I got, you know, I had bitter aloes painted on my thumb, but it was like such,

if anybody's ever been a thumbsucker, that story is both kind of weirdly comforting and also horrific and awful and creepy. But I just thought these are brilliant. Also, the choose your own adventure thing. What I want to say is it's experimental, right? But the storytelling is in this amazingly relaxed, accessible, Jackanory kind of friendly. It's pitched brilliantly.

I will play this game now. I've ordered it and I will play this game because I've not read a collection of stories that shows the human imagination to quite such sort of extraordinary, disturbing brilliance in a long, long time. It's amazing. Yeah. Get it, buy it, read it. It's called We All Hear Stories in the Dark. It's by Robert Shearman, pspublishing.co.co.uk hey let's pick this up again shortly They say you have a monster here. They say your lands are cursed. Is that what they say? Bards sing of Hrothgar's shame from the frozen north to the shores of Vinland.

There's no shame to be accursed by demons! I'm Beowulf! And I'm here to kill your monster. So there were no more heroes foolish enough to come around here and die for our gold? If we die, it'll be for glory, not for gold. Funnily enough, if we die, it'll be for glory, not for gold. It's what Mitch and I say to one another before we record one of these. It's more or less the house motto, isn't it?

It very much is. Gold! Gold! Gold! one of these it's more or less the house motto isn't it very much that's from the uh an excerpt from the 2007 robert zemeckis uh neil gaiman adaptation of beowulf and you heard there ray winston as the voice beowulf channeling Ray Winston, which I thought is very good. Laura, you're very kindly given that you are an actual expert at the actual University of Oxford. You're going to give us a quick roadmap, aren't you, in a minute about the history of the poem and a basic bluffers guide but before we do that andrew this is a halloween episode of backlisted why is beowulf a perfect halloween story it's the urtext of all horror movies i mean halloween the john carpenter film is beowulf you know it's about a world of light assailed three times by the world of darkness you know know, when you look at most horror stories, that's what they are.

And this kind of combination of the world of religion and the world of pagan darkness is, I mean, I was saying this online and someone says, well, yeah, well, of course it's, you know, that's what monster movies are. No, not just monster movies. Most horror films will take their structure from the structure of Beowulf. It's not just with this that there are monsters in it.

No. It's broadly the worst trick-or-treat story ever, isn't it? Yeah. Basically, there's someone at the door. Exactly, but also that fusion of the pagan with Christian mythology is what most horror stories are about. That's the exorcist as well.

You know, you have that set up and you have the first attack, the second attack, the third attack, and that's how they're structured, you know, that sort of escalating world of horror. And that's why Beowulf is the perfect subject for a Halloween episode of Backlisted. Laura, could you tell us, please, something about the history of the poem and something about the nature of it? Yeah, so Beowulf is also perfect for Halloween, really, I think, because of how deeply mysterious it is.

There's so little that we really know about it. As John was saying, we don't know who wrote it and where in Anglo-Saxon England or really when. We've got a manuscript that dates from around about the year 1000, but the composition can be anywhere from the 7th to the 11th centuries. And of course, the story material is clearly much older. And we've got a Christian poet looking back onto this heroic pagan past and thinking about time that's passed and how it relates to the present time. And it's a poem that is absolutely full of what Seamus Heaney called mythic potency. It's still captivating writers, translators, artists, filmmakers, and we'll come back to the film. I'm sorry to have subjected you to that.

So I think something that's quite important to think about, and I was saying this to my students this morning, Beowulf is a modern title. It doesn't have a title in the manuscript, And Beowulf is a modern title. It doesn't have a title in the manuscript, but the title Beowulf really shapes our reading of the poem. Obviously, the poem is about the hero Beowulf and his three epic monster fights against Grendel. this mysterious creature that comes out of the darkness to devour Hrothgar's veins and ruin his hall and terrorize the warriors. So it's about Grendel, his mother, and the dragon. So don't worry, it is about Beowulf. But there are lots of really interesting structures at work in the poem. We've got Beowulf as hero, and then Beowulf as king by the time he meets the dragon. The poet's asking, is it appropriate for Beowulf to still be behaving as a hero when he's a king and he has a kingdom

to be responsible for? And Swedish invasion is looming. Should he be off still trying to prove his heroic mettle? Something that students find when they read the poem is they're expecting it to just be about Beowulf. So when they begin the poem and they meet King Shield-Shafing, who's one of the ancestors of King Hrothgar, they get very confused about all the different characters and the different names and who all of these people are. But they're all integral to the poem and to the poet's way of thinking about what makes a good king, what makes a good queen, what makes a hero. I mean, I don't know about you, John and Andrew. I mean, the first time I read Beowulf, I had exactly that experience.

I think my preconceptions were there'd be more fighting and monsters. There'd be less deep backstory, which actually takes up the lion's share of the poem and i must say to i don't know if other people today found the same thing it's been tremendously beneficial reading five or six different versions of Beowulf in quick succession, because it is actually quite difficult to penetrate, right? Andrew? One of the interesting things I found was that kind of throws it back into the idea of the oral tradition. I mean, because you, suddenly you're approaching this text

not as a fixed thing set down, but as something that people take and retell in their own version. I mean, we'll come on to it later, but, you know, Heaney's version of Beowulf is very much a personal version. You can see the themes of Heaney's poems in it. You can see Heaney's life in it. And so, you know, with the other translators, they are telling their version of the Beowulf story.

It comes to us written down, but it's fundamentally an oral document, right? The text is a record of something which had been passed down orally. Yeah, so it's the version of the poem that happened to be recorded in that manuscript around about the year 1000. But it's drawing on all of this other legendary material. We've got figures in the poem who we know about from history. So it's a version of the Beowulf story. And the Beowulf poet is deeply invested in storytelling,

the importance of storytelling, how you can tell an old story from the past to relate to a present moment and think about it differently. Beowulf is a book about books. Yes, I like that. It actually is. Maybe it's because I came to it, I read Grendel first, but one of the things that I found absolutely fascinating reading Beowulf

is the role of the poet in it. The fact that the poet foreshadows stuff, he's in the story, he's outside of the story, he is bringing what you might consider incredibly modern techniques to the storytelling. And he's also aware of the role of other poets and other storytellers within it. So you have the harp player, and you have the poet inside the mead hall. So he's constantly sort of addressing different types of storytelling. I was not expecting that. And I think that's an important thing to say is that although the oral tradition is definitely there, and Tolkien is very, very clear on this, and it makes a big uh we'll come and talk on about tolkien's famous 1936 essay later on but it's a big change in but in bear will studies from

looking at it as some sort of weird artifact to an actual work of literary art that is that is you know as as much as a modern poet would be, feeding on all kinds of stuff that's around and turning an actual written poem into something that's coherent and powerful and meaningful. Laura, what else do we need to know about the structure of the poem? I think that's the key point that Andrew just raised, that the poet is there in the poem. So after the fight with Grendel, the poet, the shop,

that comes from the old English word for shaper. So the shop tells the story of Sigismund, the dragon slayer. So he's interpreting Beowulf's fight with Grendel within this heroic framework. But of course, he's also looking forward to when Beowulf will slay a dragon, but sadly also perish in the attempt at the end. So there's this incredibly complex, intricate, interlinked, interlaced structure at work that when you get to the end of the poem,

you can suddenly see what else has been going on. So Laura, Beowulf was written in Old English, which isn't English. Very true. I've learnt that. Could you read us the opening of Beowulf in Old English and then we're going to hear Seamus Heaney reading his translation of the same passage.

Can indeed. We feel like you need a bit of a run up to the opening. It needs quite a lot of welly. Because you still want to say what this fabulous word, this fabulous opening word is. Yeah. What is a brilliant word? It's a it's an interjection. It's an exclamation. It's a it's an interjection. It's an exclamation.

It's a call to attention. And translators always take a different approach to it. So, right. Let's go. What we. Sorry. Who are you calling? What? What's going on? Do it again. Come on. This is great. Come on. What? That was good cunning. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

That's fantastic. I love it so much. Me too. So let's hear, obviously, I've got baffled Tony Hancock face after that. So this is how Heaney translates the passage that Laura has just so brilliantly read for us. So, the Speardanes in days gone by and the kings who rule them had courage and greatness.

We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns. There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes, a wrecker of meatbenches, rampaging among foes. This terror of the hall troops had come far. A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on as his powers waxed and his worth was proved. In the end, each clan on the outlying coasts beyond the whale road had to yield to him and begin to pay tribute. That was one good king.

Now you notice there, Laura, that Heaney really, he plays down hoats, doesn't he? He just goes, so? What is wrong with all these young people starting their sentences with so? John, we've been around the publishing block a long time. I can remember this being published, Heaney's Beowulf.

Can you? I can completely remember it, and I remember it was a sensation because it was a top ten bestseller, which is a pretty remarkable achievement for a book of poetry anyway, but particularly remarkable for a translation of a poem that's more than a thousand years old. And it's really interesting reading the version again

in preparation for this. I hadn't really got the whole Heaney story, but he was commissioned to do it by Norton a long time earlier and had started and just got stuck with it. He described the process as being scriptorium slow, trying to translate it, and felt kind of slightly, it's not an easy thing to do. You know, Anglo-Saxon poetry, there are four beats to the line,

so each line is sort of split into two. There's a lot of alliteration. And as we'll discover, a lot of the previous translations of it have tried to keep that very heavily kind of stressed alliterative form. But he took a more generous view of it in that he wanted, he said, to try and keep the kind of forthrightness of the utterance. It reminded him that the language and the sternness of the language and the directness of the language, it reminded him of some of his elderly

kind of rural Irish relatives. And he feeds into this. So it's very much a Seamus Heaney version. It's very much like, you know, going back to sort of very early Heaney. You feel each word has a sort of a kind of a weight and a power to it. But in a way, you've also got that sense of late Heaney as well, haven't you? Because you've got the idea of the cultured poet. Yes. Looking back to this rougher age, it's caught between the spade and the pen.

The political compromises of the present. The Heaney Beowulf, I think, is a magnificent poem and a magnificent work of art. Yeah. It points you back to the achievement of a thousand years earlier. I mean, we're still even talking about it. It is pretty remarkable. As you will have heard, and we're going to hear another bit in a moment, Heaney recorded a version of Beowulf,

and it runs for about two and a half hours. Worth every second, by the way. I was reading along with the poem as printed and Heaney reading it. And there are two things to note. The first is big chunks of the poem as written are not in Heaney's telling of it. Not because it's abridged, but because I think Heaney was embracing the oral storytelling tradition in the audiobook. The other thing that's really fascinating is there are significant numbers of textual line readings that are different, where he's obviously rewritten

for the audiobook or the storytelling version, either because he had a better thought or because he wants to make a point in a different way if he's if you're listening rather than if you're reading and i mean this would be an intense thing to do but we've been living beowulf in an intense way for the last few weeks i genuinely found it incredibly interesting and insightful to compare with the decisions Heaney had made on the page and the decisions Heaney had made in terms of his reading. So Laura, from your point of view, I mean, we remember Heaney being published, you know, we remember from our book selling days, Heaney being that book coming out and being a bestseller. How is that version seen in academic circles, in Beowulf studies?

Did it reset how we think about Beowulf? Yes, I think it did. And I think it's, you know, it's still a very popular translation. Students absolutely adore it. And I think one of the reasons why it's so important, particularly for students, is that it reminds you that Beowulf is a poet's poem. It can often feel as though, you know, you're reading a translation and you're trying to get some sense of the original text and this is a historical document.

But what Heaney does is what Tolkien wanted us to do, to infuse it with that poetry and to recognise its imaginative power. And it's just fantastic it's the version that i um the second version that i read but it's the version that i studied as an undergraduate um and it's it is wonderful okay so before we move on then we've we've all everyone who's taking part today is is bringing a different translation of beowulf to uh to the group uh to to say what they discovered um but before we get on to that and it's halloween as well uh of course so i thought it might be nice before we we sign off on heaney to hear the poet himself reading the part of the poem where the first monster, where Grendel first appears.

Now, as I said, Heaney made some editorial choices. Don't shoot me, Laura. I had to make a couple of editorial choices here as well to fit it all in. But here is Seamus Heaney reading The Arrival of Grendel. Herold was the name he had settled on it, whose utterance was law. Nor did he renege,

but doled out rings and torques at the table. So times were pleasant for the people there, until finally one, a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil in the world. Grendel was the name of this grim demon, haunting the marches, marauding round the heath and the desolate fens. He had dwelt for a time in misery among the banished monsters, Cain's clan, whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts. So, after nightfall, Grendel set out for the lofty house, to see how the ringdanes were

settling into it after their drink. And there he came upon them, a company of the best, asleep from their feasting, insensible to pain and human sorrow. Suddenly then the god-cursed brute was creating havoc. Greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men from their resting places and rushed to his lair, flushed up and inflamed from the raid, blundering back with the butchered corpses. broke, Grendel's powers of destruction were plain. Their wassail was over. They wept to heaven and mourned under mourning. Their mighty prince, the story leader, sat stricken and helpless, humiliated by the loss of his guard, bewildered and stunned, staring aghast at the demon's trail, in deep distress. He was numb with grief, but got no respite, for one night later merciless Grendel struck again with more gruesome murders. Malignant by nature, he never showed remorse. So Grendel ruled in defiance of right, one against all, until the greatest house in the world stood empty, a deserted Wollstead.

For twelve winters, seasons of woe, the Lord of the Shieldings suffered under his load of sorrow. And so, before long, the news was known over the whole world. There's no shame to be accursed by demons. I'm Beowulf. i'm here to kill your monster yes i made a little editorial at the end so that's heaney we talked about the old english and we've talked about heaney and there are so many different translations of, do we have any idea how many there are, Laura? Approximately dozens, hundreds? Yeah, dozens, probably over a hundred. So many.

So I asked everybody to choose one that they had read or wanted to talk about. So we're going to spend a little time talking about each one of those translations and any ideas or thoughts that come up as a result of that particular approach. So, Andrew, can we start with you? Yeah. Which version did you read for us? I chose Michael Morpurgo's version of Beowulf,

written for children, in 2006. And I, like you, began my beowulf revision by reading a children's version because i really wanted to nail what was actually happening well that's i mean i think you're absolutely right and that really helps but what was interesting reading various different it's um it's not right to call more pergo's version of translation it's unless you could say that he's translated it into the words you know for a children's book because he basically kind of took all the other translations and kind of you know compiled his own version for kids but we were talking think, about how each version of Beowulf is personal,

that it kind of draws on the life of the translator and what they wanted to write about. And it's interesting, just below the little copyright bit at the front of the Morpurgo book, it says, to my big brothers who saved me from invaders across the cold North Sea in 1941. And this is what Morpurgo's version is about. And he clearly locates himself as a child in the story being protected from marauders. And what was fascinating reading it is you realize that children's literature is

so often designed to be read aloud, either by a parent or by the child themselves, that it is part of the oral tradition. And in a way, what Morpogo does is he kind of vanishes himself or does away with the idea of the poet, strips out anything daunting or too poetic and locates it at the core of the oral tale. This is probably the most simply told version of Beowulf. But because of that, it's the one that you feel could be most easily read aloud in a mead hall so that everybody could understand it.

You know, there is no kind of sense that it excludes anybody in its telling. And it has this sort of strange relationship with the oral tradition that I think John Gardner tackles in his 1971 novel Grendel, which I read for this as well and I was blown away. Laura, it was your suggestion that we read Grendel could you just tell people what Grendel is because I think it's going to come up a few

times while we're talking. Yeah so John Gardner's Grendel is an amazing novel that it doesn't exactly rewrite the story from Grendel's perspective it inhabits the story from Grendel's perspective. It inhabits the story. It creates this extraordinary character for Grendel that you empathise with. And one of the things about the poem is that Grendel is this sort of shadowy figure. We know a little bit of his intentions, his psychology. of his intentions, his psychology. The poet does make us feel sorry for him at moments, even though we're supposed to be on the side of the hero. And those hints that are there in the poem,

John Gardner takes and he creates this extraordinary novel. When I was thinking about it this week, it reminded me of that quote from Virginia Woolf, surprisingly enough, from Beow quote from Virginia Woolf, surprisingly enough, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. Well, Woolf talks about digging out beautiful caves behind her characters. I think it's a comment she makes about Mrs. Dalloway and and there are these caves behind characters grendel lives in this in this cave in the mere um but but gardner kind of he goes there he goes there with grendel it's it's it's just it's magnificent amazing yeah mitch had you read it before no and you know it's it's one of those weird things andy you probably like me it was a very early picador right yeah and it was one of

those that cover with the picture of the monster is one of those books that was from my childhood. I'd always thought I must read that because I'd loved Beowulf since a kid. I hadn't read the Morpurgo version, but there was an amazing illustrated book, Myths and Legends, by two illustrators called the Provvencens, who there was a version of the book. And I've tried to find it for this episode, but couldn't.

But I was always interested in the story. And that book sort of haunted me in a way. And I always thought I must find an excuse to read it. And of course, I did now got one. But it's interesting that the way that Beowulf, that the criticism of Beowulf, the interest in Beowulf has moved from Beowulf, the hero, to Grendel and indeed Grendel's mother. The amazing shift. I read the Rosemary Sutcliffe version from the 60s, which when it was first published, it was published under the title Beowulf.

And when it was republished by Puffin in the 70s, it came out under the title Dragonslayer. And when it was republished by Puffin in the 70s, it came out under the title Dragonslayer. It has a quite startling cover, which I'm going to show to people. Oh, God. Poor. To pick up what Andrew was saying, in relation to Morpurgo and to Grendel as well, one children's version is not the same as another children's version.

Yeah. You know, so we have to remember that in some ways they've simplified, but they've also emphasised what they want to emphasise because that's in the nature of the project. You tell the story you want to tell. And, you know, I can recommend the Rosemary Sutcliffe one. And like you, John john i can also i strongly recommend grendel i found that hard work but fascinating fascinating absolutely yeah

completely the thing that's fascinating about it is that and it's what i want to say about how it's related to grendel you know the idea that Grendel originally existed in the oral tradition. In the John Gardner novel, the monster is imprisoned in the written text. And whereas like previously, he might have been this constant shape-shifting thing, part of an ever-evolving oral narrative, now he's trapped within the poem, and he's doomed to repeat the same actions. It's actually, reading it reminded me of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, you know, this marginal character who must go through the same processes all the time, driven mad by the bloody harp and the poems and everything. But it's also very similar. So there's a 1973 Doctor Who episode called Carnival of Monsters, where the Doctor

and Joe land on a cruise ship in 1926 that is repeatedly being attacked by a plesiosaurus. And they realise that they're trapped in this machine called a miniscope that keeps repeating the same narrative. And this is what Gardner's Grendel is. You know, it's kind of like, I thought that was brilliant because it starkly shows how this story goes from being a living thing, this part of the oral tradition, to something fixed that people study. And poor old Grendel has no way of evolving, so he just has to keep going through the same actions. So speaking of monsters, John Mitchinson, that's not what I meant.

No, you're not a monster. Well, thank you, Andy. Which version of the poem did you read you read i read the tolkien version can you indulge me can i can i read some anglo-saxon yes yeah what i'm gonna read a little bit and i'll explain i'll i'll have to translate it obviously afterwards in in the in the tolkien translation which is very good and i'll explain why i chose it and why I think it's perfect, why it's interesting, knowing what we know about what Tolkien went on to do. He translated the poem in 1926. In fact, he translated it through his whole life. He never published it in his lifetime. So he was in his early 30s. Anyway, this is a bit,

and it's a description of the pond, the mere, where Grendel and his mother live. The Lord's Prayer CHOIR SINGS It's almost like Ray Winston was in the room. God help anyone flicking through this episode to see what's going on. It's just so lovely. I mean, obviously, I studied it as an undergraduate, but I loved it. I tried to teach myself. I was such a Tolkien fan. I tried to teach it myself when I was 14, and it's just been lovely. Anyway, what that said, and this is Tolkien's translation.

In a hidden land, they dwell upon highlands of wolf haunted and windy cliffs and the perilous passes of the fens where the mountain stream goes down beneath the shadows of the cliffs, a river beneath the earth. It is not far hence in measurement of miles that the mere lies, over which there hang rimey thickets, and a wood clinging by its roots overshadows the water. There may each night be seen a wonder grim, fire upon the flood, their lives not of the children of men, one so wise that he should know the depth of it.

Even though harried by the hounds, the ranger of the heath, the heart strong in his horns, may seek that wood being hunted from afar, sooner will he yield his life and breath upon the shore than he will enter to hide his head therein. No pleasant place is that. Now, what I like about that passage is it's a great bit of landscape poetry in the Anglo-Saxon and indeed in, it's also, it's the pond outside Moria in Lord of the Rings, this dim, grim thing, weather of sea creatures. It's also a vision, it's a vision really of hell, the fire on the flood, you know, this idea that it's both water and fire at the same time.

But Andrew talked earlier on, all the way through Beowulf and it's all the way through the Lord of the Rings, right? It's this idea of darkness, the encroaching darkness, the encroaching cold, and the warmth, the comfort of being inside, whether it's a hobbit hole or a mead hole. And this poem was so important, I think, to Tolkien. Not only does he steal Smaug the dragon straight out of Beowulf, and even steals the bit of Smaug going on the rampage because somebody snuck in and stole something from his hoard. That's later on in the poem.

But I've just thought, just in terms of the idea of sort of moorland, mist, mountains, and creating out of real scenes, mist, mountains, and creating out of real scenes. The writer Alexandra Harris, in her brilliant book Weatherland, says that it's, you know, the cauldron, Grendel's mirror is a black cauldron of chaos. But what's brilliant about the poem and why I think Tolkien's writing works as well

is that it's the topographical details of frozen woods, knotted roots, dark pool, that's kind of the real world. It's not a sort of mythical, it's not a mythical landscape at all. Laura, Tolkien wrote this essay, The Monster and the Critics. When did he deliver that and why is it so important? So he delivered it in 1936. And it's important because it really marked a sea change in the way that we approach the poem. Because he said that the previous criticism of Beowulf, so he said Beowulf has been used as a quarry of fact and fancy

far more assiduously than it has been used as a quarry of fact and fancy far more assiduously than it has been studied as a work of art. That it had been felt that the criticism was suggesting that the poet had put on the edges the things that were really interesting and actually was messing about with monsters in the middle. But Tolkien said, no, this is the most powerful poetry. It's poetry for one thing. And it has these incredible monsters in it that deserve proper literary attention. Andrew, you told me, as Seamus Heaney might say,

that when you read the monsters and the critics, you were mind blown. That you'd gone into it in kind of a homework way, but had gone, whoa, this is amazing. Absolutely, because I mean, you know, I'm not a fan of kind of, you know, the Lord of the Rings and stuff like that. So, you know, I thought I'm really not looking forward to it. But that, the fact that you could apply what Tolkien is saying to how people still write about horror

horror fiction or horror movies completely you know and basically say that the you know well the if only if only these people were making their films about something else other than these silly monsters and Tolkien says at some point you know these people think that doom is less literary than a hero's tragic flaw you know and I love I love that line you know and he people think that doom is less literary than a hero's tragic flaw. And I love that line, you know, and he basically, the fact that he puts doom centre space, you know, that's kind of what we've been talking about, you know, all through this podcast, you know.

I think it is one of the great essays of the 20th, literary essays of the 20th century because he's recovering this thing that he basically says has been so covered by scholarship that you can hardly even see it anymore. It's sort of regarded as this sort of strange, weird little folk tale. He said, this poetic talent, we are to understand, has all been squandered on an unprofitable theme as if Milton had recounted the story of Jack and the Beanstalk

in noble verse. And so he recovers the poem as a great work of art, really, and says that this was a poet. It's not about scholarship. It's about language and poetic intention and storytelling. I love the idea that Andrew likes Tolkien's early B-sides. That seems about right. That seems about right. That seems about right.

So listen, Laura, could you tell us which translation you wanted to talk about? So I wanted to talk about the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan's translation of Beowulf that he finished at the end of the 1940s. His studies in English had been interrupted by the war. And he experienced a kind of writer's block from his experience in the Second World War. And translating Beowulf brought him back to his poetic voice. When the poem, the poem was published in 1952, and when it was republished

in 2001, there's a lovely little preface where Morgan says, the translation was in a sense, my unwritten war poem. And I would not want to alter the expression I gave to its themes of conflict and danger, voyaging and displacement, loyalty and loss. And I think that speaks to one of the things we've been thinking about in terms of writers coming to the poem and using it as a way of thinking through their own experiences. So for Morgan, it's his experiences in the war, it's his sense of this band of brothers. And the sense of loss, I think, is really beautifully expressed in his translation. There's a passage when the Geats lie down in the hall ready for the Grendel fight. And Morgan translates, not one of them thought he would ever again leave there to find his beloved

land, his folk or his fortress where he once was bred. For they knew how sudden death had already swept from the wine hall more than too many of those Danish men. I think it's really moving and poignant. And when Beowulf returns back to the Geatland, to his king, Hujalak, and Hujalak's asking him, you know, how did you get on? But he's also so pleased that he's back. He doesn't think Beowulf's going to return.

And Morgan writes, he has Hujalak say, anxiety for that vexed me with throbbings of care. The exploit and my love of you clashed. I pled with you continually to make no attempt on that fiendish killer, but to let the Danes themselves determine the Grendel struggle. To God, I give thanks that my eyes can see you returned unharmed. So it's infused with this sense of transience and the ominous shadow of death that's there in the Old English, but that really resonates with Morgan because of his experiences. I also think it's an important translation because Morgan keeps returning to Beowulf throughout his career. He wrote a wonderful

poem called Grendel from the perspective of Grendel. And this, I really, I just wanted to read the opening three lines of the poem. This is Grendel's voice. It is being nearly human gives me this spectacular darkness. The light does not know what to do with me. And this was the, isn't it wonderful? Brilliant. Spectacular darkness. It's just incredible.

And it's the first poem that I read that was dealing with Beowulf from a creative perspective. And it was like a lightbulb moment for me. I suddenly thought, oh, this is a poem that you can reinterpret. You can rethink. You can engage with creatively as a poet. So would it be true to say that Beowulf is rather like, you know, obviously it's an ancient text, but is it rather like Moby Dick in as much as it's, we think of Moby Dick as a classic novel,

but in fact, the history of Moby Dick is that it takes at least 50 years before people are able to begin to think about Moby Dick as anything other than the project of a madman. That is how, no, seriously, I'm not joking. That's how Melville, when the book was published, that's how people saw it. And it takes a long time. And the experience specifically of the trauma of the First World War for people to go back to Moby Dick and begin to say, this speaks to us in our frame of mind now. Is there a sense with Tolkien and with Morgan that Beowulf starts to be something more resonant in the culture after the Second World War?

Yeah, I think so. And I think it's something that starts to be recognised as poetry and that the translations can be poetry. Both Tolkien's, obviously it wasn't published at the time, but Morgan's was one of the first that really said, I'm translating this as a poet. It is a poem and I want it to be read by modern readers of poetry. His one reason to read the translation is for his introduction to it, which is almost a manifesto for how to translate Beowulf. And he has some wonderful things that he says in it. He says, communication must take place. The nerves must sometimes tingle and the skin flush, as with original poetry.

He wants this to touch us in the way that the original poem did. And he sort of opens up this way of translating. Well, that brings us very, very smoothly, neatly and brilliantly to the final translation, which is a new one, which has just been published this year by the American writer Maria Darvana Headley. And we're just going to hear the opening, which is Headley's version of the passage that you, Laura, read in Old English and then we heard Heaney that starts with, is it what? Yeah. Okay, this is this version for 2020.

Bro, tell me we still know how to speak of kings. In the old days, everyone knew what men were. Brave, bold, glory-bound. Only stories now, but I'll sound the Spear Danes' song, hoarded for hungry times. Their first father was a foundling, shield-shaving. He spent his youth fists up, browbeating every barstool brother, bonfiring his enemies. That man began in the waves, a baby in a basket. But he bootstrapped his way into a kingdom,

treading loneliness for luxury. Whether they thought kneeling necessary or no, everyone from head to tail of the whale road bent down. There's a king. There's his crown. That was a good king. Oh, so great. Love it.

So great. So Maria Devon Headley wrote a novel a couple of years ago called the mere wife and i read that and i thought okay that's very interesting approach that's got some brilliant things in it and it centers the women in beowulf and tells a story in a contemporary setting of their version of events. And now Maria Devon, and I liked it. And now Maria Devon Headley has published a version of Beowulf, which we could see as a feminist reading of Beowulf in terms of how it views the events and the behavior of characters within the poem. And I went into it thinking, you know, it starts bro.

And it does have a lot of very self-consciously contemporary pieces of language or phrases. So I was a little bit skeptical going in. And by the end, I was absolutely captivated by it. Brilliant. It is absolutely fantastic, this translation, little bit skeptical going in and by the end i was absolutely captivated by it brilliant it is absolutely fantastic this translation for the exactly the reasons laura you were just saying that morgan's manifesto said here is a version of beowulf which speaks to us right in the here and right in the now and it's out now in the states it's coming to the uk in march next year um has anyone else i don't know

we've been so kind of jumping around while we've been preparing this episode i don't know who might have read this version and who hasn't but um laura have you read it yes i absolutely loved it and it's exactly what what morgan says about he says the translator's duty is as much to speak to his own age. And that's what Maria Devana Headley's translation does. It's punchy, energetic, funny, clever, witty, full of energy. And there are passages that I just thought, gosh, that's so good. And it sent me back to the original poem. I thought, you know what?

You've got the tone. Bang on the money there. Utterly brilliant. I've only read passages of it, because you can't get hold of it at the moment. And I did read around it, and there are some excerpts online. But 1930s, Tolkien reinvents it, and then the whole generation, Auden and McNeice, they all fall in love with Beowulf again

to the extent that by the late 40s, early 50s, it's become unfashionable amongst the undergraduates and Kingsley Amis is calling it apes bum fodder and why would anybody want to read this? So, I mean, surely it's the mark of a great work of art that this reinvention can happen. And I just feel what she's done, there's a brilliant, brilliant essay in The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison

about Grendel and Grendel's mother. Yeah, that is terrific, I agree. And that is, again, a feminist, sort of a black feminist reinterpretation of the poem, which again comes in. This is the exciting thing, right? We all now, when we read the poem, we're all on G This is the exciting thing, right? We all now, when we read the poem, we're all on Grendel and Grendel's mother's side. We're wondering, why are they so unhappy? What is it that Hrothgar has done to them? We read the heroic

narrative differently. And that, I think, is what Davana Headley has completely nailed in this. I think my perfect version of Beowulf would be the first half hour of the CGI film and then the end, the last third of the Maria Darvana Hedley translation.

With a bit of Heaney in the middle. With a bit of Heaney in the middle. The ending of Hedley's version of Beowulf is my absolute favorite. The way she approaches the material, she's able to invest that verdict on Beowulf with far more ambiguity than anybody else is able to. Because when it comes down to it beowulf arguably

wins a couple of battles and loses the war uh the and the ambiguity that's built into headley's version is that of course it ends up like that because within the framework of male behavior it's always going to be glory comes at the expense of continuity. Amazing. I thought it was absolutely fantastic. Fantastic. Let's end this section with a little bit of Heaney again. This is from the end of the poem,

and I think it was you, Laura, who mentioned this earlier. This is very near. This is like the penultimate end of the poem, and I think it was you, Laura, who mentioned this earlier. This is very near. This is like the penultimate section of the poem. This is after Beowulf has died, and there's an incredibly beautiful and lyrical section where they burn his body, and it seemed right that we should end with the voice of Seamus Heaney. So here it is the geat people built a pyre for Beowulf stacked and decked it until it stood four square hung

with helmets heavy war shields and shining armor just as he had ordered then his warriors laid him in the middle of it, mourning a lord far-famed and beloved. On a height they kindled the hugest of all funeral fires. Fumes of wood smoke billowed darkly up, the blaze roared and drowned out their weeping. Wind died down, and flames wrought havoc in the hot bone house burning it to the core. They were disconsolate and wailed aloud for their Lord's decease. A geat woman too sang out in grief. With hair bound up she unburdened herself of her worst fears, a wild litany of nightmare and lament. Her nation invaded,

enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles, slavery and abasement. Heaven swallowed the smoke. I think that's remarkable. Brilliant. Ireland or Sarajevo or Syria or unfortunately wherever you want.

I mean, what an amazing thing. So before we sign off, Laura, you have taken the baton of interpretation and run with it. You have written some of your own work around Beowulf. And I was going to ask you if you would share a little bit of that with us now. Yes, I'd be really happy to. It was a funny thing. It's not something I was expecting to do. I wasn't expecting to find myself writing a set of poems inspired by the women of Beowulf.

But it just happened. And it happened through my teaching. And I think, you know, Beowulf is a poem that when you've been teaching it and reading it for such a long time, it just gets into your bones and it's just it's there in me. And through my teaching earlier in the year, I started to to create these poems based on the female characters with a broadly speaking sort of frame narrative of a female poet who is giving voice to women in the poem who haven't got a voice. I think that's one of the things that's so important about the creative translations and adaptations we've been thinking about today. It's about giving voices to the voiceless within the poem, whether that's Grendel or Grendel's mother. I'll just read a couple of little snapshots, if that's OK.

So this is my version of the of the opening. This is the second poem in my collection. The poem is called Indeed. Indeed, we have heard of the Danes. We never stop hearing about them, those death and glory Danes, them, their demons and their glory days. Me, I prefer a little variation. If you'd like to listen, this is our sister's side of the story if you'd like to yeah yeah that's it right there great and i'll can i'll just give you um grendel's mother there's a short poem in the voice um of grendel's mother that's partly about the ways in which she's uh been written about in the poem um and has a little bit of my own northern dialect in there. So this is Grendel's mother speaking. For all your bluster, warrior poet,

your puffed up preening, your sword swagger and shield shuffling, you still won't look at me. Petrifying people, that's not my style. It's not my stare that needles your braggadocio. Any road, You started it. Edging me out, making me your meak-stapper, your boundary-stalker, border-controller. I never wanted to shoulder those lines. You kettle me into the corners of your compounds, tuck me into the bottom drawer of your word-horde,

shushed and smothered by your fabrications. Water witch? She-wolf of the deep? Troll dam, give over. Don't be so nesh. Brilliant. Brilliant. What a great word.

So thanks, Laura. That's brilliant. Andrew, Andrew, in a sense, I'm about to ask Andrew a question, which I feel all of Backlisted for five years has been leading up to. This is like, if you've been listening of that listed for five years has been leading up to this is like if you've been listening to this thing for five years everybody you'll know where this is going now andrew beowulf if beowulf were a gene kelly film which gene kelly film would it be? It's a film in which Gene plays a rough-hued

young outsider who joins with the king's men to do battle with a figure of ultimate evil and in the end is hailed as a symbol of kindness and grace. It's The Three Musketeers.

Three Musketeers. Bravo, Andrew Mayle. Brill. Bravo, Andrew Mayle. Brilliantly done. Brilliantly done, Andrew Mayle. Fantastic. So thank you, Andrew. We should also mention that Andrew and I have pulled together a Spotify playlist, which will be available.

We'll tweet it and it'll be available on the website. Andrew, do you want to tell people a few of the things? It's inspired by Beowulf. We were carried away. Can I tell them about the main discovery of compiling the list? Well, we've got things like Creatures from the Black Lagoon by Dave Edmonds, and we've got Grendel by Marillion, of course, and we've got Grendel's Mother by the Mountain Goats.

But Andrew made a major discovery. What is it, Andrew? It's based on the fact that we didn't really discuss it, that Grendel is basically a descendant of Cain from the Bible. Yeah. And this is kind of where the sort of the religious aspect of the poem crosses over with folklore. And so obviously one of the tracks that we thought

has got to be Bruce Springsteen's Adam Raised the Cane. But looking at the album that it's taken from, which, John, is called Darkness on the Edge of Town, and begins with a track called Badlands, with an opening line, lights out tonight, trouble in the what-lands. Yes! And Adam Raised the Cane includes a line

which is clearly about Grendel. Your mother calls you by your true name. You remember the faces, the places, the names. You know it's never over. We feel we have proved that, Laura, you're going to be teaching the springsteen translation of beowulf hence for which is the yeah but basically darkness on the edge of town is a concept out about beowulf something in the night track three something in the night yeah racing in the street is clearly a kind of streets of fire when the dragon attacks it's locked down

amazing so the whole of Darkness on the Edge of Town will be in that Spotify playlist for you to make up your own minds but the darkness is ebbing at our feet Andy the darkness is all around us threatening to bring this to an end sadly

so huge thank you to you both. To Laura for being our sure-footed guide through the rocky terrain of the poem. To Andrew for being the best of all hearth companions. To Nicky Birch for sweetening the sound and to Unbound for lending us the ship and the shields. God almighty, Mitch, these are the best ones of those you've ever done they are brilliant you can download all 122 previous episodes of batlisted including all

the halloween specials plus follow links clips and suggestions for further reading by visiting our website at batlisted.fm we're always delighted if you contact us on Twitter or Facebook or now in sound and pictures on Instagram too. You can show your love directly by supporting our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash backlisted. We aim to survive without paid for advertising. Your generosity helps us do that.

All patrons get to hear backlisted episodes early and for less than the price of a horn of mead lot listeners get two extra lot listed a month that shining hall of revelry where we gather to read hear listen look laugh and show our workings uh lot listeners also get to hear their names read out on the show as a mark of our thanks and appreciation and this week's selection are, John, you go first. We've got Gil.

We have Stephen Canning, Anna Ostrovanova, Charlie Gould, David Tinline, Michael Westcott, Mary Feather, Elaine, the mysterious HALT001 University of Minnesota, Janet Hardman, Stephen Reed, Teresa Cusseo, Jaisal Adkins. And we'd also like to thank Cindy Vincent, Dan Rebelato, Leanne Hollister, John Stone, And that is it. Yes, our tale is at an end. Thank you for listening. We'll be back in a fortnight.

If you prefer to listen to Backlisted without adverts, you can sign up to our Patreon. It's www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. As well as getting the show early, you get a whole two extra episodes of what we call Locklisted, which is Andy, me and Nicky talking about the books, music and films we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight.