As far as we can judge by the description given in the poem, Hrothgar and his household in their bowers or bed-chambers had heard little of the tumult, but they went early in the morning to the hall to rejoice in Beowulf’s victory. There was great feasting again in the hall that day, and Beowulf and his followers were rewarded with rich gifts. After dinner the minstrel again took up the harp, and sang some of the favourite histories of their tribe. “The lay was sung, the song of the gleeman, the joke rose again, the noise from the benches grew loud, cup-bearers gave the wine from wondrous vessels.” Then the queen, “under a golden crown,” again served the cup to Hrothgar and Beowulf. She afterwards went as before to her seat, and “there was the costliest of feasts, the men drank wine,” until bed-time arrived a second time. While their leader appears to have been accommodated with a chamber, Beowulf’s men again occupied the hall. “They bared the bench-planks; it was spread all over with beds and bolsters; at their heads they set their war-rims, the bright shield-wood; there, on the bench, might easily be seen, above the warrior, his helmet lofty in war, the ringed mail-shirt, and the solid shield; it was their custom ever to be ready for war, both in house and in field.”
Grendel had a mother (it was the primitive form of the legend of the devil and his dam), and this second night she came unexpectedly to avenge her son, and slew one of Hrothgar’s favourite counsellors and nobles, who must therefore have also slept in the hall. Beowulf and his warriors next day went in search of this new marauder, and succeeded in destroying her, after which exploit they returned to their own home laden with rich presents.
These sketches of early manners, slight as they may be, are invaluable to us, in the absence of all other documentary record during several ages, until after the Anglo-Saxons had been converted to Christianity. During this long period we have, however, one source of invaluable information, though of a restricted kind--the barrows or graves of our primeval forefathers, which contain almost every description of article that they used when alive. In that solitary document, the poem of Beowulf, we are told of the arms which the Saxons used, of the dresses in which they were clad; of the rings, and bracelets, and ornaments, of which they were proud; of the “solid cup, the valuable drinking-vessel,” from which they quaffed the mead, or the vases from which they poured it; but we can obtain no notions of the form or character of these articles. From the graves, on the contrary, we obtain a perfect knowledge of the form and design of all these various articles, without deriving any knowledge as to the manner in which they were used. The subject now becomes a more extensive one; and in the Anglo-Saxon barrows in England, we find a mixture, in these articles, of Anglo-Saxon and Roman, which furnishes a remarkable illustration of the mixture of the races. We are all perfectly well acquainted with Roman types; and in the few examples which can be here given of articles found in early Anglo-Saxon barrows, I shall only introduce such as will enable us to judge what classes of the subsequent mediæval types were really derived from pure Saxon or Teutonic originals.