The dragon (Beowulf) Grendel's mother and Grendel, Beowulf returns to homeland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years pass with Beowulf leading as a wise king, when a local dragon is angered when a slave enters its lair and takes a cup from its treasure. The creature attacks the neighboring towns in revenge. Beowulf and a troop of men (“the Geats”) leave to find the dragon’s lair. The Geats run away in fear, leaving only Beowulf and his young companion Wiglaf to slay the dragon. Beowulf receives a fatal wound from the dragon, but Wiglaf impales the dragon’s belly to reduce the
Old English literature Paul Muldoon's "Caedmona's Hymn" in his "Moy Sand and Gravel" (2002) and U. A. Fanthorpe's "Caedmon's Song" in her "Queuing for the Sun" (2003). These translations differ greatly from one another, just as Seamus Heaney's "Beowulf" (1999) deviates from earlier, similar projects. Heaney uses Irish diction across "Beowulf" to bring what he calls a "special body and force" to the poem, foregrounding his own Ulster heritage, "in order to render (the poem) ever more 'willable forward/again and again and again.'" Old English literature Old English literature or Anglo-Saxon literature, encompasses literature written in Old English, in Anglo-Saxon England from the