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| A Raider in a Dark-age Tomb |
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| Beowulf's slave finds a rich ship-burial of a dark-age warrior |
| The Golden Cup is Stolen |
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| Hoping to win Beowulf's favor, his slave steals a treasure, heedless of skeleton and carved dragon |
| The Guardian of the Tomb |
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| Unbeknowst to the slave, the dragon who guards the treasure returns and is furious |
This scene from the third eda of Beowulf, in which a thief provokes the dragon who guards a treasure-trove, so inspired
the translator of the epic that he spliced a similar theme into a children's story he was preparing for his children.
In the translator's story, though, the thief was . . . Bilbo Baggins! The story, of course, was The Hobbit, and the
translator was J.R.R. Tolkien.
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