George Borrow’s English Translations from Grundtvig’s Prefatory Poems to Bjowulfs Drape

Resumé

In N. F. S. Grundtvig’s Bjowulfs Drape (1820) – the first full translation of Beowulf into a vernacular language – the main text is preceded by two prefatory poems by Grundtvig, one in Danish and one in neo-Old English. These two poems were rendered into English verse by George Borrow, a Victorian writer of modest notoriety who was best known for his works in prose. Borrow’s two translations from Grundtvig remained unpublished at the time of Borrow’s death in 1881, but they have been in print since 1923, though without identification of their sources. This article presents Borrow’s two translations, with consideration of their adaptational relationship to Grundtvig’s originals and of the circumstances of their creation.