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woodland insects and maggots, or buried for the worms and such to clean it, or even placed in an ants nest’. In a few days ‘they will clean off every bit of tendon and fat from the bone’.62 Such details bring the organic nature of the casket to life for us. Presumably, this process would have likewise heightened the Anglo-Saxon bone-worker’s sense that he or she was working with something still living or, at least, undead. The carving stage would have had a similar effect. Each side of the casket is intricately carved, the runes and images cut with a knife. From the
54 Transporting Chaucer two similes: ‘[a]s Hurlewaynes meyne in every hegg that capes’ and ‘as the leves grene’ (8–9). To be a member of Hurlewaine’s retinue is to be neither living nor dead. In medieval French texts, Hurlewain, or Hellequin, is a figure from charivari. He leads processions of cavorting tricksters who wear disguises or masks and dress up in outlandish costumes. Illustrations show Hellequin as a leader of the ‘undead’.2 Prior to any formal introductions on first-name terms, the pilgrim assembly of The Canterbury Interlude is become a harlequinade
of such places with the undead ( draugr ), inhabiting tombs that also contain grave-goods. Into what appears to be a northern folk tradition of these haunted places, the poet has introduced a weapon linking the place with those rebellious primeval giants that he mentioned in the family tree of monsters when introducing Grendel earlier in the poem. The giants’ war with God is not an explicit element