Crumbling Assumptions

Having never read Beowulf, I harbored some assumptions:

1.  It was a pagan tale of blood and guts.
2.  It was prose, not poetry.

You know what they say when you assume something, don't you?  To assume makes an "ass" out of you and me.  Thankfully I'm not too upset about this assumption.  I've read the complete introduction, prologue and first chapter of the epic poem. 

It's actually musical to read, despite its opening stanza of how "Shild made slaves of soldiers from every land...he'd beaten into terror."  And, as I learned reading the introduction, it is a Christian tale, albeit an early Christian tale.  This is surprising news to my ignorant assumption.  I do, however, like the picture painted by the poem's first lines:

"Shild's strong son was the glory of Denmark;
His father's warriors were wound round his heart
With golden rings, bound to their prince
By his father's treasures."

Shild had a son, Beo, who became king then had four children, the eldest of them on the throne, Hrothgar.  He built a huge castle called Herot (akin to the tower of Babble) that "reached higher toward Heaven than anything."  We're then introduced to some foreshadowing and an explanation of the hideous monster, Grindel, who was "spawned in slime of two monsters born of Cain."  Now that's a nasty parentage.