Tom Hillman is taking on another of the big questions. This time it’s Fate, and how Turin relates to it.1 He calls out the line from “Beowulf”: “Fate often keeps an unfey man safe when his courage avails.”
I’ve taken a couple of courses from Tom Shippey in which he brought up that line. Usually with a comment like, “That’s not much of a fate, if you can avoid it with a bit of courage.” When he’s being more formal2, he says
… people are not under the domination of wyrd, which is why “fate” is not a good translation of it. People can “change their luck”, and can in a way say “No” to divine Providence, though of course if they do they have to stand by the consequences of their decision.
The Road to Middle-Earth, Chapter 5
I suspect that wyrd isn’t the only word here whose meaning has slipped over the last thousand years. The word unfaege, produced from the word for “fey”, also has the prefix “un-“. When I first learned Old English, it jumped out at me that “un-” isn’t quite what it used to be. In most words, it means what modern speakers expect, but there are plenty of words where it doesn’t. Unweder, “un-weather”,is a storm. Unweod, “un-grass”, is a weed, as is unwyrt. Uncræft, “un-craft”, is an evil art. Unbletsung, “un-blessing” is not the absence of a blessing, but a curse.
The “un-” prefix seems also to have meant “wrong” or “the opposite of what you wanted”. Is it possible that unfaege, “un-fey”, might have meant something like “doomed to something else”? Then the Beowulf poet would have meant, “If wyrd has something else in mind for a man, he’ll come through this one safely as long as he keeps his courage.” With the implication that a coward can screw up even the fate of the world, so don’t be one.
DS
If fey means ‘doomed to die’, being ‘not doomed to die’ surely means they already have fate onside in the survival department?
Joe
That’s my problem. We’re all doomed to die, so fey must mean something else. Tolkien’s “doomed to die, and I have nothing better to do” (I paraphrase) works in context, but Beowulf is clearly reciting a proverb here, and that doesn’t make a good proverb.
Søri
Couldn’t it mean “not fated,” like “still free to choose”? Or could it possibly mean “not a doom,” an “un-doom,” i.e. a good outcome???
Joe
What an interesting thought! Maybe some people are “fate-virgins” who haven’t yet had their destiny determined. I can imagine a Rincewind-type character who imagines he can keep that status indefinitely, so he spends all his time hiding from the process server who’s trying to deliver his fate to him.