whole Hunnish nation rode round his bier and sang his praises.^167 Following
the construction of Beowulf ’s tumulus twelve warriors of noble birth ride
round it, apparently delivering eulogies (3169–74). In a Nart tale translated by
Dumézil, when Syrdon’s enemy Sosyryko dies, he performs a travesty of the
proper procedures. He beats his head about with a stick and laments, ‘How
am I to go on living, when you are no more?’ Then he rides Sosyryko’s horse
to his grave and canters round it, improvising variants on the theme ‘How
your death delights me, Sosyryko!’^168
These customs of honorific circumequitation throw some light on the
remarkable Scythian procedure described by Herodotus (4. 72). On the
anniversary of the royal funeral, he says, they kill the best fifty of the king’s
surviving servants and the finestfifty horses, stuff them, and set them up,
supported on wooden cradles, in a circle round the tumulus, one rider to each
horse.
Eulogies sung at funerals must have been one source that contributed to
the traditions of heroic poetry. As the warrior’s mortal husk decayed in the
digestive system of Mother Earth, or floated up in a swirl of black particles
towards Father Sky, his name continued its perilous quest for undying
renown on the lips of men.
(^167) Jordanes, Getica 256, de tota gente Hunnorum lectissimi equites... in modum circensium
cursibus ambientes facta eius cantu funereo tali ordine referebant (there follows in 257 a précis of
their dirge).
(^168) G. Dumézil (as n. 58), 168; cf. Sikojev (1985), 144 f. An Ossetic custom is recorded
by which ‘the dead man’s widow and his saddle-horse are led thrice round the grave, and no
man may marry the widow or mount the horse thus devoted’ (E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture
(4th edn., London 1903), i. 463 f.). For all these customs cf. Sam Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer
(Christiania 1915), 9–13; W. Pax, Wörter und Sachen 18 (1937), 44–7; J. Cuillandre, La droite
et la gauche dans les poèmes homériques (Paris 1944), 277, 284 f.
- Arms and the Man 503