Beowulf

trans. Helen Conrad-O’Briain

So it is a grief for an old man To live to see his boy Ride on the gallows. Then he laments, singing his grief When his son hangs for the ravens’ satisfaction –And he cannot give him any help, so old and useless wise. Always he remembers Each morning as it comes His boy’s way out of the world. He does not care to see some other heir to keep the name and lands When that one through death’s necessity left behind all that could have been. Broken with sorrow he looks at his son’s home, the desolate hall, the wind-swept bed, long beyond tears, The rider sleeps, the warrior in the grave; there is no harping No joy about the place as there once was. He goes to his bed and sings his loss of son One after another, fields and home-place all seem too large.

16 | Hittite

The Myth of Illuyanka

CTH 321; KBo III 7 and KBo XVII 5, Illuyanka Part 1: (paragraphs 1-12)

Beckman, Gary “The Anatolian Myth of Illuyanka.” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 14 (1982): 11-25