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Hello and welcome to this podcast about the Dragon in the old English epic Beowulf and the

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translators and fantasy writers who've been inspired to tell its story anew for the modern age.

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Dragons have exerted an irresistible power over the imagination for centuries.

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Going back to Beowulf and beyond. Fierce fire belchers smoke snorters, wide winged far-flyer's, dragons keep to their caves and hidden burrows.

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They brood over their treasure guard it obsessively, and we cannot help but be drawn to that gem encrusted, scaly magnificence.

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There is danger in arousing a dragon. Of course, the flames will pursue you to the death if you take so much as a sniff at their loot.

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But they have nonetheless a unique glamour. As Seamus Heaney puts it. Dragons are known to us from myth, legend and fairy tale.

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Enticing stories cluster around them, but words of wisdom warn us not to get too close.

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J.R.R. Tolkien reminds us that it does not do to leave a live Dragon out of your calculations.

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And the motto of Hogwarts School teaches us that you must never tickle a sleeping dragon.

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And yet the temptation to sneak inside the dragon's cave to stay upwind of the powerful snout,

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that can smell a dwarf at a hundred paces run strong and deep,

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inspired by the unnamed dragon in Beowulf, along with a riddling Fafnir from Old Norse legend,

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Tolkien created one of the most charismatic dragons of the 20th century Smaug in The Hobbit.

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And in his essay on fairy stories, he confessed that, quote, He desired dragons with a profound desire.

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And while he might not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, he declared that, quote,

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The world that contained even the imagination of Fafnir was richer and more beautiful at whatever cost of peril.

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My name is Dr. Laura Varnam. I'm a lecturer in old and middle English literature at University College Oxford.

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And I too have harboured a deep desire for dragons ever since childhood form my first encounter with

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The Hobbit and the Tolkien Bestiaries that tantalised me with fantastic beasts and where to find them.

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I've been entranced by these larger than legend reptiles.

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I've tracked them in Modern Fantasy from Christopher Paulini's Eragon and his dragonriders to the mother of Dragons herself,

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Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones. But as a mediaevalist researching and teaching adaptations of old stories,

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I've been most interested to identify their ancestors in early mediaeval works such as Beowulf and in particular

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to explore modern reimaginings of those original dragons and even to have a go at writing some myself.

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In this podcast, I'll be pursuing one legendary dragon into his

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Or is it her treasure filled den, The Imaginations of J. R. R. Tolkien and fantasy author and translator Maria

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Headley will be our guides to approaching the Dragon in Beowulf,

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and I will conclude by adding my own poetic rendering of the Beowulf Dragon to the store of myth and legend.

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The clifftop barrow of Beowulf's Dragon is our hunting ground, home of the final and fatal antagonist in the old English epic.

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Where Beoulf finally meets his match, going out in a blaze of heroic glory, but also, sadly, in my view, taking the dragon with him.

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Tolkien's expertise as professor of early mediaeval literature at Oxford is

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itself legendary and his contribution to Beowulf studies with his essay Beowulf,

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The Monsters and the Critics in the 1930s was field changing.

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He replaced the monsters at the centre of scholarly discussion and emphasised above all the poem's status as a work of unrivalled, imaginative power.

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I'm lucky enough to spend my days in term time in Oxford, just as Tolkien did, introducing my students to old English poetry such as Beowulf.

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Susan Cooper, author of The Dark is Rising fantasy series, was even more lucky.

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She was educated in the Oxford of Tolkien and Lewis themselves, and she recalled fondly that they taught us to believe in dragons.

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And although my students might look at me with a wry smile or a raised eyebrow, I aim to do the same.

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Bilbo Baggins tells us that it is foolish to laugh at a live dragon, and in my view,

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it's equally unwise to underestimate the very real and symbolic potential of a literary dragon.

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Tolkien has had an enormous influence on my own development as a literary critic, teacher and writer.

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And in this podcast, I will examine his response to the Dragon in Beowulf in his lectures,

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letters and commentary on the poem to reveal his surprisingly ambivalent attitude, which ultimately inspired his own fantasy creation of Smaug.

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The dragon of his dreams. From there

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I will jump feet first into the radical new feminist translation of Beowulf by

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Maria Headley published to significant critical and popular acclaim in 2020.

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Headley had already published a superb novel inspired by the female characters of the poem, and we set in modern America called The Mere Wife.

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The title is a play on the old English mere,

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or water woman used to describe Grendel's mother and the dismissive pigeonholing of a woman as a mere wife.

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Her energetic and dynamic new translation opens by turning the attention grabbing Hwaet of the original poem into the explosive bro,

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foregrounding the competitive,

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aggressive masculinity that drives the poems, depictions of monster fights and feuds and can appear to marginalise women's agency in the poem.

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But Headley also recognises that quote. While there are many examples of gender inequality in the poem, there is no shortage of female power, unquote.

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She deliberately sets out that she states in her introduction to encourage moments in which the feminine might be poetically suggested.

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And she makes the bold and brilliant move of making the Dragon female.

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This gender switch enables Headley to offer a fresh perspective on the dragon's vulnerability as a result of the invasion of her horde.

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But it also makes space for her to reaffirm female power and the dangers of underestimating it.

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So let's begin with Tolkien. What does he have to say about the dragon in Beowulf and where in his lecture, the monsters and the critics,

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he laments that real dragons essential to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale are actually rare.

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And he concedes that in Northern literature, the only ones that really count are the Old Norse Dragon Fafnir,

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who has a riddling conversation with the hero Sigurd before he dies from the wound inflicted on his belly and the dragon in Beowulf,

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or rather the two dragons in Beowulf.

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Because after Beowulf's fight with Grendel, the shop or poet recites the story of Sigmund, who successfully kills a dragon and loots its hoard. 

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This story, within a story inspired by Sigurd and Fafnir,

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celebrates Beowulf's monster slaying credentials but also prefigures the dragon

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lurking at the end of his own tale against whom Beowulf will not be so successful.

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So even before the real dragon swoops into the main plot of the story he's conjured up in the poet's imagination.

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In Tolkien's essay, he praises the rich potential of dragons in storytelling.

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But he cannot help but express his disappointment in the actual dragon that Beowulf ultimately faces.

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In general terms, he says that, quote, A dragon is no idle fancy, whatever may be his origins, in fact, or invention.

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The dragon in legend is a potent creation of man's imagination, which are in significance than his burrow is in gold.

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But in a lecture in nineteen forty nine, Talking confessed that he didn't think the dragon in Beowulf was frightfully good.

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He said that Fafnir was better and that Smaug and his conversation is obviously in debt to you.

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And Tolkien admitted to similar reservations in the monsters and critics say, quote, Beowulf's Dragon, if one wishes really to criticise,

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is not to be blamed for being a dragon, but rather for not being dragon enough plain, pure fairy story dragon.

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There are in the poems some vivid touches of the right kind in which this dragon is real worm with a bestial life and thoughts of his own.

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But the conception nonetheless approaches draconitas us rather than Draco, a personification of malice, greed and destruction.

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The evil side of heroic life, unquote. So for Tolkien, the dragon in Beowulf becomes almost too symbolic.

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He tips over into unappealing allegory in his embodiment of the anti-king,

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greedily hoarding his gold rather than dispensing it as a reward to his loyal retainers like the human kings' in the poem.

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So when it comes to Smaug in The Hobbit, Tolkien is able to create exactly the dragon he desires.

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Yes, he describes Smaug's dreams of greed and violence.

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But he also emphasises his physical weight, the bestial bulk and heft of the vast red gold dragon.

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He describes him, quote, with wings folded like an immeasurable bat,

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turned partly on one side so that the Hobbit could see his underparts and his long,

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pale belly crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his long lying on his costly bed.

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And this glittering description is also more than evident in Tolkien's own illustration of Bilbo's visit to the Dragons hold.

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But more than physical presence Smaug has glamour.

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This dragon has, as Tolkien puts it, overwhelming personality.

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And his effect on Bilbo is to almost enchant him into giving himself away.

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When Smaug's, quote, roving eye flashed across him,

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he trembled and an unaccountable desire seised hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug.

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In fact, he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon's spell.

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The dragon spell that Tolkien casts over us as readers resides, of course,

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in his language and the words spell derives from the old English word for tale. In a build-up of tension, Bilbo hears Smaug before he sees him.

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And Tolkien invokes the hobbit like preference for the homely and familiar in his description of Smaug snoring.

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There is, quote, a sort of bubbling like the noise of a large pot galloping on the fire, mixed with a rumble as of a gigantic tomcat purring.

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But you domesticate a dragon at your peril. And when Bilbo finally peeks his head into the dungeon hall at the root of the mountain.

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Tolkien revels in the contrast and in the inexpressibility of what he sees Smaug nesting on his treasure.

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He writes, To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.

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There are no words left to express his staggerment,

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since men change the language that they learnt of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.

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Bilbo had heard tell and sing of Dragon hoards before. But the splendour, the lust, the glory of such treasure had never yet to come home to him.

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According to the Oxford English Dictionary staggerment is taught Tolkien's own coinage here,

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and it's appropriate for the passages focus on the way in which in reality,

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the dragon and its hoard is beyond ordinary description, beyond familiar language.

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And yet characteristic of Tolkien's dragon is his susceptibility to flattery, to honeyed words.

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Bilbo appeals to his ego in their riddling conversation.

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Addressing him Oh Smaug the tremendous, the mighty. Oh Smaug, the chiefest and greatest of calamities.

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The unassessably wealthy, Smaug the impenetrable.

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And it is this rich cocktail of fawning words and piercing questions that tricked Smaug into revealing the chink in his armour.

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The patch in the hollow of his left breast as bear as a snail out of its shell.

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And that will ultimately be his downfall. Bilbo sweet talks Smaug, telling him he did not come to pilfer his hoard.

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But to have a look at you and see if you were truly as great as tales say and Smaug himself

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indulges in a spot of self mythologising when he declares My armour is like ten fold shields.

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My teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail, a thunderbolt, my wings are hurricain, my breath death.

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You really can't help but read that passage dramatically.

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So dragons attract rich language and imagery in fantasy literature just as much as they do treasure,

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and it's always felt symbolically suggestive to me that the old English term for a man's treasury of language is his word-hoard.

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The Beowulf poet's word-hoard for the Dragon includes eald uhtscea∂a Old Dawn Ravager. Nacod

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Ni∂draca, naked malicious dragon. He is fyre befangen - enveloped in Flame.

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The Dragon is a wyrm, a worm or serpent, hat ond hreohmod 

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hordweard the hot and savage minded hoard guardian.

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He is a terror, a far flyer, a war monger, a fire Drake, a terror, an uncanny and dreadful stranger.

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The Dragon coils itself burns, glides, slithers and loops across the land.

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It is gryrefahne. Terrifying in its shimmering colours, its flames advance in waves.

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It shatters Beowulf's sword and sinks its fangs into his neck. But in the end, the wideflier it is brought to ground, stilled by its wounds.

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No longer wheeling through the air, gloating in its treasure, the dragon falls to earth  fire quenched and unleashing.

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I describe the dragon in my own words here is uncanny. And this is in response to two old English words.

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First is the adjective on unhryre, which means fierce, cruel or dreadful, but literally is a negation, unpleasant.

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And there's a wonderful Germanic understatement and a dragon being merely unpleasant.

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The second is the description of the dragon is gryregæst a dreadful stranger.

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Ironically enough, when Beowulf, who is truly the unwelcome houseguest, enters the dragon's burrow,

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this description is part of the Beowulf poet's fascination with holes that visitors and

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invaders in the poem and the dragon itself is appropriately described as a guest or stranger.

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When he burns down Beowulf hall. Seamus Heaney translates dreadful stranger as outlandish thing in his award winning translation of the poem.

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And that sense of the dragon is both recognisable but strange.

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Uncanny in its dangerous familiarity. Outsized and extravagant; is suggestive to me.

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of another quiet and understated moment in the narrative that shows the poet's skill when describing the dragon.

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When Beowulf approaches the barrow, he lets out a great heroic shout that enters under the stone ahead of him.

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We're told that Hete wæs onhrered, hordweard oncniow


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mannes reorde; næs ðær mara fyrst // freode to friclan. Hate was aroused.

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The Hoard Guardian recognised the man's speech. There was no more time to seek for peace or friendship.

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What's most unnerving about this moment to me is that the dragon recognises the man's speech.

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He knows it for what it means and what it will mean for him.

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And for a moment, friendship between man and beast quivers in the echo of that shout.

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There's no more time to seek for peace or friendship, but it's snatched away in the space of a second.

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One of the Beowulf poet's strengths in his rendition of the Dragon episode is the way in which empathy is created for the Dragon's plight.

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The Dragon has been guarding its treasure perfectly peacefully. Thank you very much.

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Until it was disturbed by the fugitive who stumbled upon the hoard and before I move on from Tolkien,

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I just want to read from his commentary on this passage,

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which shows the poet's deafness in structuring the episode and creating its emotional meaning.

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Tolkien's commentary was published posthumously in 2014 alongside his 1926 translation of the poem,

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neither of which were intended for publication but were working documents for his teaching.

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The commentary material comes from his Oxford lectures and is a real goldmine for the student or Dragon Hunter.

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This is what he says about the introduction of the Dragon into the poem when the fugitive steals a cup from his horde.

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And it's quite a long quotation. Allowing for the old English manner, this is a very moving treatment of this fairy tale situation,

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remarkable for the sympathy shown by the author for both the wretched fugitive and the Dragon.

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But it's characteristic of this manner that the narrative is not straight.

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First we hear of the dragon, then that someone got into the barrow and took a cup.

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Then that nearby folk soon learnt of the dragon's rage. Then we hear more of the intruder.

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He was a fugitive slave master unknown. Then some precious details of his experience of the barrow are lost.

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This is because the manuscript is damaged at that point.

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So it's not until later that we get the detail that he had trodden close to the worm's head,

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it is also characteristic of our poet and of old English as we know it as a whole,

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that the scene in the barrow passes at once into an elegiac retrospect on the forgotten lords who placed

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their gold in the hoard and then died one by one until it was left masterless and open prey to the dragon,

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end quote. And Tolkien takes pains to explain that this elegiac passage is not inartistic.

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So this moment when treasure is placed in the hoard and lamented because it will be of no more use to the people who are passing away.

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So Tolkien writes, for one thing,

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this passage occupies the emotional space between the plundering of the hoard and the curiously vivid and perceptive lines on the dragon,

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snuffling and baffled rage and injured greed when he discovers the theft.

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Also, of course,

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the feeling for the treasure itself and this sense of sad history is just what raises the whole thing right above a mere treasure story,

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just another dragon tale. The whole thing is sombre, tragic, sinister, curiously real.

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The treasure is not just some lucky wealth that will enable the find it have a good time or marry the princess.

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It is laden with history leading back into the dark heathen age ages beyond the memory of song, but not beyond the reach of imagination.

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To me, this is Tolkien at his literary critical, best on the Beowulf poet's achievement, the interweaving of history and elegy,

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the delay of action and the foregrounding of emotional response, the symbolic weight of the treasure and how the dragon feels about its loss.

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That emotional space in the episode, as Tolkien puts it, not only elevates the narrative beyond being just another Dragon story,

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but it opens up room for modern translators and creative writers to spread their own wings and to cast new light on the creature and her treasure.

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My use of her brings us to Maria Headley's magnificent feminist translation of it, of Beowulf with its female dragon.

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I cannot recommend this translation highly enough. Her introduction is as brilliant a critical engagement with the poem as I've ever read.

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And she truly breathes new and fierce life into the poem for a 21st century audience.

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As I mentioned earlier, Headley was keen to encourage, as she puts it, moments in which the female might already be poetically suggested.

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We see this, for example, in her use of marital imagery to describe conflict and male bonding,

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hinting at the ways in which women in the poem are often relegated to second place.

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War was the wife Hrothgar wedded first, she translates, his hall was created for Warriors as a house to espouse

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His faithful. In her description of the sword melting like ice when Beowulf decapitates the body of Grendel Headley portrays spring as female.

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In contrast to God, the father. She translates, the slaying sword began to melt like ice just as the world thaws in May,

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when the father unlocks the shackles that have chained frost to the climate and releases hostage

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heat uses sway over seasons to uncage his prisoner spring and let her stumble into the sun.

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This female spring also calls to mind Persephone as entrapment in the underworld, in classical mythology. When it comes to the dragon,

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Headley emphasises her status as a warrior, just as she does for Grendel's mother, whose realm is similarly invaded and violated by Beowulf.

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Headley writes of the Dragon across a star studded sky in deepest dark, one night, a dragon raged unchecked.

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She was a scar skinned warrior, long accustomed to shadow soaring by moonlight, defending her claim hoarding in her own high hall.

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No man knew the way into the dragon's clifftop cocoon, but a thief stumbled through a split in the stone and retrieved a gem festering goblet.

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He robbed her of nothing else, just the cup. But up she rose, raging, grieving.

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Though to cry out was to confess she'd been stripped while sleeping. This country.

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These creatures would feel her fire. This punchy, poignant moment intertwines the dragon's rage and her grief, and again,

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it recalls Grendel's mother, whom Headley describes as crazed with sorrow,

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looking for someone to slay, someone to pay in pain for her heart's loss when she returns to Heorot to take revenge for the death of her son.

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The feminisation of the dragon here enables these fertile links to be drawn to the poem's

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other powerful female warrior and the dragon's loss is not merely a treasured possession

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to confess she'd been stripped while sleeping triggers associations of shame,

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a key concept in the poem, and the violence perpetrated against women in their own homes.

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But balanced against this, Headley portrays Beowulf's desire to conquer the dragon single handedly as his downfall in a brilliant

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perspective shift from the original poem that gives us an insight into Beowulf's internalised misogyny.

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The Beowulf poet writes that he distained to attack the far flung flyer with a host, a large army, he did not fear that attack,

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nor did he worry at all about the dragon's warfare, his strength and courage, because he Beowulf had survived many battles.

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Now, if you listen carefully to this moment, the Beowulf poet is not unaware of the dragon's strength and courage.

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It's Beowulf himself, who fails to recognise it and to take it into account. Headley translates this perfectly foregrounding Beowulf's viewpoint.

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She writes that he was too proud to bring a war band to mar an army against the firmament flyer.

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His plan would be his pyre. He imagined the dragon, a dimwit clocking neither her courage nor her grit.

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There's a grim satisfaction then in Beowulf being proved wrong,

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and Headley revels in her descriptions of the dragon's attack. There's a truly wonderful passage in her translation,

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the serpent swirled, twisting and unfurling her scales.

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Flames swayed, flinging herself hard at fate, a flexing firework aimed straight at the king.

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The two battled furiously. The dragon renewed rapturous, inhaling, uncoiling afresh.

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The energy and verve is really irresistible.

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When the dragon sinks her needle fangs into Beowulf's throat Headley describes her, shaking him like a captured flag.

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The dragon here is a victorious queen aloud indeed celebrated in her moments of glory.

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When Beowulf retaliates and draws a dagger, he dipped it into the dragon's side.

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I love Headley's use of dipped here for Beowulf's wounding of the dragon.

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It smacks of that old English understatement, but it also drains the action of its force.

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He doesn't stab her. He just dips his blade into her.

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And even when her body is diminished to a shovel, split snake dead in dark dirt beside a gilded grave.

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Headley takes the poet's cue and deploys the most dazzling language from her word-hoard to re-establish the dragon's imaginative dominance in the poem,

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she writes Never again what she soar through a starry sky revel in rising rhapsody rolling in and out of clouds and mist.

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A raging rainbow glinting golden. This is the rich and perilous beauty that Tolkien would have admired.

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This is the kind of writing that reignites my own desire for dragons and most importantly,

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the ability of the original poem to speak to and connect with a 21st century audience.

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Scottish poet and Beowulf translator Edwin Morgan said that a successful translation must make the nerves tingle and the skin flush,

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as with original poetry. And Headley fulfils this criteria, and then some, please do go away and read this incredible translation.

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At the close of the poem, as Beowulf is entombed in his kingly funeral pyre and eulogised by his men,

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the dragon is unceremoniously cast into the sea. In Headley's rendering they heave the dragon over the cliffs into the sea.

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Brine bedding that beast bride. That ring taker. In my own creative reimagining of the Dragon,

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I wanted to find a space earlier in the story to cast my own dragon spell within the original epic and to bring the dragon back to life.

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I'd like to end this podcast by sharing two of my own poems about the Dragon.

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That's a part of my poetry collection inspired by the women of Beowulf that I wrote back in twenty nineteen.

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The first is a direct response to Tolkien's disappointment in the Dragon he found in the poem, and it's called His Dragon.

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The second is part of a longer sequence of poems in which I give the dragon a voice,

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reimagine the identity of the thief who plunders her hoard, and take a closer look at what the dragon is really guarding.

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One of the driving forces of my poetry is to give voices to the voiceless in the poem, from Grendel's mother to Princess Freyawaru.

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Both poems are we here are in the voice of a powerful female dragon.

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I also deepen the association between dragons and language in making space for a treasured word-hoard at

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the back of the cave in which a number of familiar old English words from the original poem are lurking,

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waiting for someone to steal them and sing them anew. Since childhood,

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I've always felt the dragons are more often than not misrepresented and misunderstood when Eustace

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Scrubb turned into a dragon in C.S. Lewis Voyage of the Dawn Treader in the Narnia series.

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I always felt that that might not be so bad after all,

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and that armed with the Dragon lore that Eustace so clearly lacks, I might make a better job of it than he does.

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I wouldn't mind being a dragon, at least on weekends.

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In my poem, my dragon has the wisdom to foresee her cataclysmic end, but she will survive in the stories that are crafted from her word-hoard,

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made in particular by the little thief, a young girl of my own imaginative invention called Ellen, whose name means courageous deed in old English.

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But before we meet Ellen, this is my poem, His Dragon, in affectionate tribute to J. R. R. Tolkien.

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His dragon - 'Not dragon, enough for Professor Tolkien, I'll be bound,

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though I do hail from his northern imagination where we know that drama means sharp sighted and to beware of flattery,

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keen as an arrow and just as dangerous to dragons. It was my cousin that the professor deemed not frightfully good,

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but given half the chance that red great dragon would have raised Northmoor Road to ruins and shown him who's boss If Beowulf hadn't stepped in.

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Of course, heroes just can't resist a dragon fight is the epic scale of the thing, though I admit that our scales are also an attraction.

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You should have seen the handbag that Grendell fashioned from my uncle, but I digress.

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Dragons aren't known for their timekeeping that we keep hold of our gold well enough while we can.

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I'd have liked to have seen the professor's face if I turned up for his lecture on Dragons at the University Museum,

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his catch of the breath when a female dragon swooped beneath that rib cage ceiling, richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.

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And next, I'd like to read my poem, The Dragon and the Thief, written from the point of view of the dragon within her cave.

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Take courage. I won't bite. Tell the truth, I'm glad of the company, sorry about the smell.

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It's the Warriors. They can't help shitting themselves when they come face to face with my magnificence.

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The wings and tail are quite something. I agree. And the fire is on brand, though.

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I try to keep it on the down low in my own home. The smoke is a drag, makes the place feel smaller.

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Heroes get so distracted by knickknacks than knuckleheads.

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Bright and shiny baubles, trinkets, tchotchkes.

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That's not the treasure I'm guarding. Back of the cave beyond the heap topped with a sword that looks like Hrunting a snuffle to the left.

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That's it. There. Counted, catalogued, cared for - my word hoard.

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The nouns are forming a shield wall arranged by equipment, shield and sweord human thegn cyning cwen,

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a monster, your standard eotenas ond ylfa, your giants and elves.

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But keep your eye on the ellengast. That bold demon is always trying to sneak out and poets just love to hook him in.

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A good stock of wyrd - faith is essential when death is a regular caller.

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And of course you can't have Grendel without gryre.

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The kind of horror that makes my smartest kenning sit up straight that ealuscearwan ale-sharing is a real bully by the by.

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I always recommend an illiterate little writing pair of adjectives grim and gredig say to start

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you off for a monster fight and snotor and sci∂ferth covers your kings' wisdom and strength.

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Your flatpack heroes should be the strengest of men in ∂am dæge

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∂isses lifes. But if your title isn't set in those days of this life, then in geardagum is your best bet.

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In former days, a bit of spit and polish will clean off that tarnish and then you can all lament with some heirlooms.

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I'm all out of eotonisc swords, the last giant made blade dissolved on contact, which was unfortunate,

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but there's an ealuweg ale cup that has quite the tale to tell A spell - story - that will have you spellbound.

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It's just there beside some words I've been saving for a special occasion.

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Ellen sweostor scop. Courage, sister poet.

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Footsteps slinking past my snout. What's your name?

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I say, pretending not to see the cup tucked under the cloak.

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Ellen, she answers. Chin up proud and you've got all the courage you need.

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I reply as I shift my bulk coins cascading ready for take off it's a bore to have to go out burning.

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But I must keep up appearances. I do put on an excellent show lif-draca.

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They'll holler fire Drake. Gu∂-scea∂a Warmonger, la∂ lyftfloga hated high flyer - nacho ni∂draca.

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What a smooth operator this lithe lizard. They'll shake their puny fists as my fateful flames roast them in their tracks.

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A dawn visitor and a dawning realisation. Don't get me wrong, I do know that the tail end of this particular tale is my death, my conflagration.

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But I'll take King Beowulf with me. I'd like to qualify as epic, afterwards and our feud will burn itself out.

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King and Dragon chasing each other's tails in a zoomorphic feedback loop.

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But she'll remember me. She won't be able to help herself, although I suspect that with my spell at her heels she will.

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Thank you very much for listening,

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and I hope that my dreams of dragons in this podcast will encourage you to revisit Beowulf with new dragonish eyes and to add to

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your own literary goldhord from the translations and retellings of writers such as JRR Tolkien and Maria Dhavana Headley.

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Thanks again.