Some scholars posit a connection between the mythical figure of Beowa and the legendary Beowulf. As the two characters possess many of the same attributes, it has been suggested that "a god Beowa, whose existence in myth is certain, became confused or blended with Beowulf." Another possibility is that the (first) scribe responsible for the Beowulf text conflated two names. At the beginning of the poem, there is a character called Beowulf, the son of
Scyld Scefing, but this character is
not the Beowulf who is the protagonist of the poem. Rather than accepting that there are two different characters with this unusual name, many modern editions of the poem replace this name with "Beow".
J. R. R. Tolkien, one of the proponents of reading "Beow" here, suggested that the use of "Beowulf" as Scyld Schefing's son was a scribal error for the original "Beow", noting that the two scribes who produced the Beowulf manuscript were "both extremely ignorant of and careless with proper names", and called the occurrence of "Beowulf" in this place in the manuscript "one of the oddest facts in Old English literature" and "one of the reddest and highest red herrings that were ever dragged across a literary trail". Kathleen Herbert draws a link between Beowa and the figure of
John Barleycorn of traditional English folksong. Herbert says that Beowa and Barleycorn are one and the same, noting that the folksong details the suffering, death, and resurrection of Barleycorn, yet also celebrates the "reviving effects of drinking his blood." Beowa has also been connected to the figure of Bjárr or Bjórr, who appears in the
Kálfsvísa (in which he rides a horse called Blakkr, or Black) and the
Bjarkarímur (in which he is the grandfather of
Bödvar Bjarki, who has been separately connected with the hero
Beowulf). ==See also==