Now that you’ve read all about “sele and meal” from my previous post, here’s some useful advice for the beautiful.
(The following is from the same Heaney translation of Beowulf that I quoted in my previous post; this can be found at lines 1931-41. I won’t reproduce the Old English this time, but you can find a text here and here, among other places. I’ve noticed that not everyone agrees that the name of the queen is Modthryth; a few versions have “mod” as a separate word and “Thryth” as the name of the queen. Anyway, that’s not important here.)
… Great Queen Modthryth
perpetrated terrible wrongs.
If any retainer ever made bold
to look her in the face, if an eye not her lord’s
stared at her directly during daylight,
the outcome was sealed: he was kept bound
in hand-tightened shackles, racked, tortured
until doom was pronounced — death by the sword,
slash of blade, blood-gush and death qualms
in an evil display. Even a queen
outstanding in beauty must not overstep like that.
Good advice, even today.