[2] Among other things, it seeks to clarify and integrate a number of narrative strands in the early medieval poem.
Tolkien's recasting of the material also incorporates the sluggish youth motif and the abandonment of the hero at the waterfall, both elements found in the analogous Old Icelandic Grettis saga.
The suggestion that a waterfall like that of Grettis saga was part of the original setting of the pool of monsters in Beowulf was made by W.W. Lawrence in 1912.
The text's editor, Christopher Tolkien, dates much of the composition and revision of the tale to the early 1940s on the basis of datable content on the versos of the manuscript leaves.
[5] The tale was actually accepted for publication in the forties by Gwyn Jones, who had already published "The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun" for Tolkien in The Welsh Review; but the collapse of the latter in 1948 prevented "Sellic Spell" from appearing for almost seventy years.