[Sidenote: Beowulf as ‘sister’s son’ becomes chief of his maternal kindred.]
Why had he done this? If we might tentatively use the clue given by ancient Greek tribal custom to elucidate a Scandinavian case, we should say that on failure of male succession the ‘sister’s son’ of Hygelac had been called back into his mother’s kindred to become its chieftain, leaving Wiglaf, his next of kin on his father’s side, to sustain the chieftainship of his paternal kindred. The right of the maternal uncle, known to have existed under early Greek law, to claim his ‘sister’s son’ if need arose, to perpetuate the mother’s paternal kindred, suggests a similar explanation in Beowulf’s case. Such a right, found as well in the Laws of Manu, may possibly have been inherent in Scandinavian tribal custom also. Such a suggestion would be at least consistent with the fact of Beowulf’s having been brought up from seven years old in the household of his maternal grandfather, and treated by him as a son. It would be in harmony, too, with what Tacitus describes to have been the relation of the ‘sister’s son’ to the _avunculus_ amongst the German tribes, and the peculiar value of the ‘sister’s son’ as a hostage.[60]
Some indirect confirmation of the probable truth of such a suggestion may perhaps be also drawn from the fact that in Beowulf, when a man’s father is no longer living, the poet sometimes seems to describe him as his maternal uncle’s nephew instead of as his father’s son.
Heardred, the young son of Hygelac and Hygd his queen, after his father’s death is spoken of no longer as Hygelac’s son, but as the _nephew of Hereric_, ‘nefan Hererices’ (2207). Now his paternal uncles were Herebeald and Hæthcyn, and it becomes an almost necessary inference that Hereric was a maternal uncle. Thus:
HÆRETH (1929) father of Hygd +------------------------+ | | (HERERIC?) HYGD, m. Hygelac uncle of Heardred (2207) | HEARDRED nephew of Hereric[61] (2207)
So also in the case of Hygelac himself. He was the son of Hrethel. The poet calls him son of Hrethel (1486), and again _Hygelac Hrethling_ (1924). But after Hrethel’s death he calls him ‘Hygelac of the Geats, _nephew of Swerting_’ (‘_Hygelac Geáta nefa Swertinges_’) (1204). Here again it seems likely that Swerting was the maternal uncle, though the poet, as in the other case, does not think it needful to explain that it was so. Otherwise, why the change of epithet?