What the Horse Knows

Autumnal Reprise: Brecca

Might and Minotaur

Here's Brecca once again.


Brecca: stoneware; glazed with seafoam. I like how the glaze broke well, filling in the hollows with a rich light blue and revealing the contours just the way I wanted. Art-luck.

You can also see Brecca here and here.

Brecca on Deck

Another "chess" piece: Brecca, the Bull--Beowulf's foe/companion in the swimming match.

I like the wet "planking" beneath this northern minotaur's head.

Brecca the Bull

A figure of fun, but no Unferth. This is my small envisioning of Brecca, Beowulf's opponent/companion in that swimming competition amidst the rough waves and rougher monsters of the North Sea. Troublemaker Unferth brings up the competition, claiming that Beowulf lost, but the Mighty Geat sets the story straight and sends Unferth into retreat by a well-placed personal jab. According to Beowulf, Brecca couldn't swim away from him, and he choose not to outswim Brecca just yet. The two men spent days swimming, swords in hand, until a storm on the fifth night separated the two men, and then Beowulf was beset by nicors, nine of which he slew, before coming ashore in Finland, I believe. I always wondered what happened to his swimming companion. And I always wanted to hear Brecca's version of the story.

If Beowulf may figure as the Bee-Wolf or the Bear (aren't kennings fun?), then Brecca ought to figure as a Ram, Boar, or Bull, some stubborn beast. The Breaker figured in my mind, finally, as Bull. I'd meant to form a complete set, a chess set, of such figures from Northern myth and legend, but I don't play chess . . . .

Stoneware; glazed with seafoam. I like how the glaze broke well, filling in the hollows with a rich light blue and revealing the contours just the way I wanted. Art-luck.

By the way, reading the Anglo-Saxon epic in the original Old English showed me just how powerful Beowulf is with words. Translating for myself, I could feel fully how this character is articulate, weighing words as well as deeds. In fact, he's diplomatic and devastating, whatever's needed, and no mere muscleman. Seamus Heaney's translation is my definite favorite, the one I turn to again and again, but the old E. Talbot Donaldson prose translation is the real deal too, a plain-style gem for accuracy and Northern European understatement, just like the original.