Beowulf: The Complete Story of the Hero Who Slew Grendel | Anglo-Saxon Legend for Sleep

Beowulf: The Complete Story of the Hero Who Slew Grendel | Anglo-Saxon Legend for SleepA slow, quiet retelling of Beowulf, from the hall to the barrow, made for falling asleep to.It's the oldest long poem in English, and it survives in exactly one manuscript, which was damaged by fire in the seventeen hundreds and very nearly didn't survive that either. Everything anyone knows about it comes down to that one battered book.The story is three fights, spread across a lifetime. A hall in Denmark where the noise of people enjoying themselves has been drawing something out of the marshes at night for twelve years, and a young man who sails over from another country to deal with it — and who insists on doing it without weapons, because the thing doesn't use any. Then the part people forget: what came up out of the water afterwards, looking for its son, and the descent into a lake to finish it. And then fifty years pass in the space of a few lines. He's an old king now, and there's a dragon in a burial mound because somebody took a cup from it, and the ending of the poem is not a triumphant one. It's mostly about the men standing in the trees not coming to help, and what everyone knows is going to happen to the kingdom afterwards.It is a poem about old age and reputation and the fact that nothing holds, told as a monster story. That's why it lasted.The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Nothing in it is built to frighten you. It's slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off in the hall and surface again fifty years later, that's the intended use. Most people don't make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics, Anglo-Saxon poetry and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can't sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.