Anonymous British

Grendel

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him to hear the din of the loud banquet every day in the hall, the harp being struck and the clear songs of a skilled poet telling the mastery of man's beginnings, How the Almighty had made the earth a gleaming plain girdled with waters; in his splendour He set the sun and the moon to be earth's lamplight, lanterns for men, and filled the broad lap of the world with branches and leaves; and quickened life in every other thing that moved. So times were pleasant for the people there until finally one, a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil in the world. Grendel was the name of the grim demon haunting the marches, marauding around the heath and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time among the banished monsters, Cain's clan, whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel the Eternal Lord had exacted a price: Cain got no good for committing that murder because the Almighty made him anathema and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms and the giants too who strove with God time and again until He gave then their reward. So, after nightfall, Grendel set out for the lofty house, to see how the Ring-Danes were settling into it after their drink, and there he came upon them, a company of the best asleep from their feasting, insensible to pain and human sorrow. Suddenly then the God-cursed brute was creating havoc: greedy and grim.