In 1958, the movie mogul Harry Cohn died. Seeing the huge crowds that turned out for the funeral, one actor expressed his bewilderment: “But everyone in Hollywood hated Harry!” he exclaimed. “Why are all these people here?” In 1981, after a conference in Toronto and the publication of a proceedings volume, a no-less-surprising throng began to gather, in books, journals and conferences, for the scholarly funeral of a dateable Beowulf. We have no record of anyone exclaiming in surprise: “But the evidence for an early date of Beowulf is relatively consistent, convincing and well-established! Why would people be happy to replace it with speculation and uncertainty?” But the words of the comedian Red Skelton, who had worked for Cohn, explain both seeming paradoxes: “Give the people what they want and they'll turn out for it.”

Even when I was a graduate student at my first significant Anglo-Saxon conference, ISAS 1995 at Stanford, I heard the rumors about that Toronto conference. Sometimes they were sotto voce, sometimes louder (especially when there was an open bar), but always they said a version of the same thing: the famous Dating of Beowulf conference at Toronto and the subsequent proceedings volume were not entirely on the level.