Chapter 1

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YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH

ALBERT S. COOK, EDITOR

VII

ANDREAS:

THE LEGEND OF ST. ANDREW

TRANSLATED FROM THE OLD ENGLISH

BY

ROBERT KILBURN ROOT

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1899

ERRATA.

p. IV. For _Angelsächsen_ read _Angelsachsen_.

p. V. " Fritsche " Fritzsche.

p. IX. " homilest " homilist.

p. 18, 1. 550. " has " hast.

p. 27, 1. 835. " 'Till " Till.

P. 57. " Siever's " Sievers'.

PREFACE

It is always a somewhat hardy undertaking to attempt the translation of poetry, for such a translation will at the best be but a shadow of that which it would fain represent. Yet I trust that even an imperfect rendering of one of the best of the Old English poems will in some measure contribute towards a wider appreciation of our earliest literature, for the poem is accessible to the general reader only in the baldly literal and somewhat inaccurate translation of Kemble, published in 1843, and now out of print.

I have chosen blank verse as the most suitable metre for the translation of a long and dignified narrative poem, as the metre which can most nearly reproduce the strength, the nobility, the variety and rapidity of the original. The ballad measure as used by Lumsden in his translation of _Beowulf_ is monotonous and trivial, while the measure used by Morris and others, and intended as an imitation of the Old English alliterative measure, is wholly impracticable. It is a hybrid product, neither Old English nor modern, producing both weariness and disgust; for, while copying the external features of its original, it loses wholly its æsthetic qualities.

In my diction I have sought after simple and idiomatic English, studying the noble archaism of the King James Bible, rather than affecting the Wardour Street dialect of William Morris or Professor Earle, which is often utterly unintelligible to any but the special student of Middle English. My translation is faithful, but not literal; I have not hesitated to make a passive construction active, or to translate a compound adjective by a phrase. To quote from King Alfred's preface to his translation of Boethius, I have "at times translated word by word, and at times sense by sense, in whatsoever way I might most clearly and intelligibly interpret it."

The text followed is that of Grein-Wülker in the _Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie_ (Leipzig, 1894), and the lines of my translation are numbered according to that edition. I have not, however, felt obliged to follow his punctuation. Where it has seemed best to adopt other readings, I have mentioned the fact in my notes.

I have compared my translation with those of Kemble and Grein (_Dichtungen der Angelsächsen_), and am occasionally indebted to them for a word or a phrase.

It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. Frank H. Chase, who has very carefully read my translation in manuscript; and to Professor Albert S. Cook, who has given me his help and advice at all stages of my work from its inception to its publication. To Mr. Charles G. Osgood, Jr., I am also indebted for valuable criticism.

ROBERT KILBURN ROOT.

YALE UNIVERSITY, April 7, 1899.

INTRODUCTION

[Sidenote: _The Manuscript_.]

While traveling in Italy during the year 1832, Dr. Blume, a German scholar, discovered in the cathedral library at Vercelli an Old English manuscript containing both poetry and prose. The longest and the best of the poems is the _Andreas_, or _Legend of St. Andrew_.

How did this manuscript find its way across the Alps into a country where its language was wholly unintelligible? Several theories have been advanced, the most plausible being that advocated by Cook.[1] According to this view it was carried thither by Cardinal Guala, who during the reign of Henry III was prior of St. Andrew's, Chester. On his return to Italy he built the monastery of St. Andrew in Vercelli, strongly English in its architecture. Since the manuscript contained a poem about St. Andrew, it would have been an appropriate gift to St. Andrew's Church in Vercelli. Wülker's theory that it was owned by an Anglo-Saxon hospice at Vercelli rests on very shadowy arguments, since he adduces no satisfactory proof that such a hospice ever existed.

[Footnote 1: _Cardinal Guala and the Vercelli Book_, Univ. of Cal. Library Bulletin No. 10. Sacramento, 1888.]

[Sidenote: _Authorship and Date_.]

On the strength of certain marked similarities of style and diction to the signed poems of Cynewulf, the earlier editors of the _Andreas_ assigned the poem to him, and were followed by Dietrich, Grein, and Ten Brink. But Fritsche (_Anglia_ II), arguing from other equally marked dissimilarities, denies its Cynewulfian authorship, and is sustained in his position by Sievers, though vigorously opposed by Ramhorst. More recently Trautman (_Anglia_, Beiblatt VI. 17) reasserts the older view, declaring his belief that the _Fates of the Apostles_, in which Napier has discovered the runic signature of Cynewulf, is but the closing section of the _Andreas_. There is much to be said in favor of this last theory, which would establish Cynewulf as the author of the entire work; but the whole question is far from being settled. We can at least affirm that the author was a devout churchman and a dweller by the sea, thoroughly acquainted with the poems of Cynewulf.

It is equally impossible to determine with any certainty the date of authorship, since the poem is wholly lacking in contemporary allusions. Nor can we base any argument upon its language, since, in all probability, its present form is but a West Saxon transcript of an older Northumbrian or Mercian version. If Cynewulf flourished in the eighth century, the date of the _Andreas_ is probably not much later. The Vercelli manuscript is assigned to the first half of the eleventh century.

[Sidenote: _Sources_.]

Fortunately we can speak with more assurance about the sources of the poem. It follows closely, though not slavishly, the _Acts of Andrew and Matthew_, contained in the _Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles_.[1] Like the great English poets of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the poet of the _Andreas_ has borrowed his story from a foreign source, and like them he has added and altered until he has made it thoroughly his own and thoroughly English. We can learn from it the tastes and ideals of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers quite as well as from a poem wholly original in its composition. Most clearly do we discover their love of the sea. The action of the story brings in a voyage, which the Greek narrative dismisses with a few words, merely as a piece of necessary machinery. The Old English poem, on the contrary, expands the incident into many lines. A storm is introduced and described with great vigor; we see the circling gull and the darting horn-fish; we hear the creaking of the ropes and the roaring of the waves.[2] Every mention of the sea is dwelt upon with lingering affection, and described with vivid metaphor. It is now the "bosom of the flood," now the "whale-road" or the "fish's bath." Again it is the "welter of the waves," or its more angry mood is personified as the "Terror of the waters." In the first 500 lines alone there are no less than 43 different words and phrases denoting the sea.

[Footnote 1: _Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha_, ed. Tischendorf. Leipzig, 1851, pp. 132-166. (For a translation of part of the _Acts of Andrew and Matthew_, see Cook's _First Book in Old English_, Appendix III.)]

[Footnote 2: See 369-381.]

Daybreak and sunset, too, are described with much beauty, and in one passage at least with strong imagination. We can have no doubt that the poet was a close watcher and keen lover of nature. We can imagine him walking on the cliffs beside his beloved ocean, watching for the sunrise, rejoicing in the glory of the sky,

As heaven's candle shone across the floods.[1]

[Footnote 1: See 243.]

I have said, too, that he was a devout churchman. Many of the noble hymns and prayers with which the poem abounds are largely original, expanded from a mere line or two in the Greek. Many and beautiful are the epithets or kennings which he applies to God, taken in part from the Bible, and in part from the imagery of the not wholly extinct heathen mythology.

Thoroughly English is his love of violent action, of war and bloodshed. Andrew is a "warrior brave in the battle"; the apostles are Thanes of the Lord, whose courage for the fight Failed never, e'en when helmets crashed in war. and their missions are rather military expeditions than peaceful pilgrimages.

One concrete example will serve well to show in what spirit the author has dealt with his original. The disciples of Andrew are so terrified by the sea that the Lord (disguised as a shipmaster) suggests that they shall go ashore and await the return of their master. In the Greek the disciples answer: "If we leave thee, then shall we be strangers to those good things which the Lord hath promised unto us. Therefore will we abide with thee, wherever thou go."[1] In the Old English :--

O whither shall we turn us, lordless men, Mourning in heart, forsaken quite by God, Wounded with sin, if we abandon thee? We shall be odious in every land, Hated of every folk, when sons of men, Courageous warriors, in council sit, And question which of them did best stand by His lord in battle, when the hand and shield, Worn out by broadswords on the battle-plain, Suffered sore danger in the sport of war. (405-414.)

[Footnote 1: Bede, _Hist. Eccl._ IV. 2.]

There is in the Greek no trace of the Teutonic idea of loyalty to a lord, which is the ruling motive of the Old English lines.

But did the poet read the legend in the Greek? The study of that language had, it is true, been introduced into England in the seventh century by Archbishop Theodore[1], but we can hardly assume that this study was very general. Moreover, there are several important variations between the poem and the _Acts of Andrew and Matthew_, facts wanting in the Greek, which the poet could not possibly have invented. For example, the poem states that Andrew was in Achaia when he received the mission to Mermedonia. In the Greek we find no mention of Achaia, nor is the name "Mermedonia" given at all. After the conversion of the Mermedonians, the poet says that Andrew appointed a bishop over them, whose name was Platan. Again the Greek is silent. There is, however, an Old English homily[1] of unknown authorship and uncertain date, which contains these three facts, (though the name of the bishop is not given). Still another remarkable coincidence has been pointed out by Zupitza.[2] In line 1189 of the _Andreas_, Satan is addressed as _d[=e]ofles str[=æ]l_ ("shaft of the devil"), and in the homily also the same word (_str[=æ]l_) is found. But in the corresponding passage of the Greek we find [Greek: O Belia echthrotate] ("O most hateful Belial"). From this correspondence between the poem and the homily, Zupitza argues the existence of a Latin translation of the Greek, from which both the _Andreas_ and the homily were made, assuming that the ignorant Latinist confused [Greek: Belia] (Belial) with [Greek: Belos] ("arrow," "shaft,"), translating it by _telum_ or _sagitta_. It is hardly probable that both the poet and the homilest should have made the same mistake.

[Footnote 1: Bright, _Anglo-Saxon Reader_, pp. 113-128.]

[Footnote 2: _Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum_, XXX. 175.]

The homily could not have been drawn from the poem, nor the poem from the homily, for in each we find facts and phrases of the Greek not contained in the other. For example, both in the Greek and in the homily, the flood which sweeps away the Mermedonians proceeds from the mouth of an alabaster image standing upon a pillar, while in the poem it springs forth from the base of the pillar itself. On the other hand, most of the dialogue between Andrew and the Lord on shipboard, as well as other important incidents, are wanting in the homily.

Summing up, then, we have the homily and the poem agreeing in some important points in which both differ from the Greek, but so dissimilar in other points that neither could have been the source of the other. In the light of these similarities and variations, and of others which space prevents me from mentioning, we must suppose the homily to have been taken from an abridgment of the Latin version, of which the poet saw a somewhat corrupt copy. It is also not improbable that this Latin version may have been made from a Greek manuscript varying in some details from the legend as it appears in Tischendorf's edition. This view is sustained by a Syrian translation, which in some respects agrees with our hypothetical Latin version. But this Latin version has never been discovered, though some fragments of the legend are found in the Latin of Pseudo-Abdias and the _Legenda Aurea_,[1] which curiously enough supply several of the facts missing in the Greek, namely, that Andrew was teaching in Achaia, and that the land of the Anthropophagi was called Mermedonia.

[Footnote 1: Grimm, _Andreas und Elene_, XIII-XVI.]

So much for the sources of the poem as a whole. The poet is also deeply indebted to the _Beowulf_ and to the poems of Cynewulf (unless he be Cynewulf himself) for lines and phrases throughout his work. One example of this borrowing will suffice. In line 999, when Andrew reaches the prison, we read (translating literally): "The door quickly opened at the touch of the holy saint's hand." In the Greek: "And he made the sign of the cross upon the door, and it opened of its own accord." Why has the poet omitted the sign of the cross? We are unable to answer until we read in the _Beowulf_ (721) that at the coming of the monster Grendel to Heorot "the door quickly opened ... soon as he touched it with his hands."

[Sidenote: _The Poem as a Work of Art_.]

How shall we rank the _Legend of St. Andrew_ among the other poems of the Anglo-Saxons? and what are its chief merits as a work of art? The Old English epics may be divided into two general classes: the heroic epic, of which the _Beowulf_ is the chief example; and the larger group of religious epics, including the poems of Cynewulf, of Pseudo-Cædmon, the _Judith_, and the _Andreas_.

In spite of occasional Christian interpolations the _Beowulf_ is essentially pagan, the expression of English sentiments and ideals before Augustine led his little band of chanting monks through the streets of Canterbury. In the _Andreas_ we see better, perhaps, than in any of the religious epics, these same sentiments and ideals softened and ennobled by the sweet spirit of the Christian religion. We see the conversion of England in the very process of its accomplishment. We see the beauties of Paganism and those of Christianity blending with each other, much as the Medieval and the Renaissance are blended in Spenser. In the one aspect Andrew is the valiant hero, like Beowulf, crossing the sea to accomplish a mighty deed of deliverance; in the other he is the saintly confessor, the patient sufferer, whose whole trust is in the Lord.

If we compare the poem with the other epics of its class, its most formidable competitors are the anonymous _Judith_ and Cynewulf's _Christ_. But _Judith_, though unquestionably more brilliant, is but a fragment of 350 lines, and the _Christ_, in spite of its many beautiful passages, is entirely lacking in movement. The _Andreas_ is complete, and, if we except the long dialogue of Andrew and the Lord at sea, moves steadily towards the end with considerable variety of action. If the characterization is crude, the descriptions are vivid, the speeches are often vigorous, and the treatment of nature is throughout charming. It seems to me eminently suited by its subject and manner to stand as an example of the Old English religious epic, an example of a form of literature with which every serious student of our English poetry should be familiar. For English literature does not begin with Chaucer. He who would understand it well must know it also in its purer English form before the coming of the Normans.

[Sidenote: _The Argument_.]

It only remains to give a brief synopsis of the poem. It has fallen to the lot of Matthew to preach the Gospel to the cannibal Mermedonians; they seize him and his company, binding him and casting him into prison, where he is to remain until his turn comes to be eaten (1-58). He prays to God for help, and the Lord sends Andrew to deliver him (59-234). Andrew and his disciples come to the seashore and find a bark with three seamen, who are in reality the Lord and His two angels. On learning that Andrew is a follower of Jesus, the shipmaster agrees to carry him to Mermedonia (234-359). A storm arises, at which the disciples of Andrew are greatly terrified; he reminds them how Christ stilled the tempest, and they fall asleep (360-464). A dialogue ensues, in which Andrew relates to the shipmaster many of Christ's miracles (465-817). He falls asleep, and is carried by the angels to Mermedonia. On awaking, he beholds the city, and his disciples sleeping beside him. They relate to him a vision which they had seen. The Lord appears and bids him enter the city, covering him with a cloud (818-989). He reaches the prison, the doors of which fly open at his touch, and rescues Matthew, whom he sends away with all his company (990-1057). The Mermedonians, confronted with famine, choose one of their number by lot to serve as food for the rest. He offers his son as a substitute, but, as the heathen are about to slay their victim, Andrew interposes and causes their weapons to melt away like wax (1058-1154). Instigated by the Devil, they seize Andrew, and for three days subject him to the most cruel torments (1155-1462). On the fourth the Lord comes to his prison and heals him of his wounds. Beside the prison wall Andrew sees a marble pillar, which, at his command, sends forth a great flood, destroying many of the people (1462-1575). Andrew takes pity upon them and causes the flood to cease. The mountain is cleft and swallows up the waters, together with fourteen of the worst of the heathen. The others are restored to life and baptized. After building a church and appointing a bishop, Andrew returns to Achaia, followed by the prayers of his new converts (1575-1722).

THE LEGEND OF ST. ANDREW

Lo! we have learned of Twelve in days gone by, Who dwelt beneath the stars, in glory rich, Thanes of the Lord, whose courage for the fight Failed never, e'en when helmets crashed in war, From that time when they portioned each his place, As God himself declared to them by lot, High King of heaven above. Renownèd men Were they through all the earth, and leaders bold, Brave in the battle, warriors of might, When shield and hand the helmet did protect 10 Upon the field of fate. Of that brave band Was Matthew one, who first among the Jews Began to write the Gospel down in words With wondrous power. To him did Holy God Assign his lot upon that distant isle Where never yet could any outland man Enjoy a happy life or find a home. Him did the murderous hands of bloody men Upon the field of battle oft oppress Right grievously. That country all about, The folkstead of the men, was compassèd With slaughter and with foemen's treachery, 20 That home of heroes. Dwellers in that land Had neither bread nor water to enjoy, But on the flesh and blood of stranger men, Come from afar, that people made their feast. This was their custom: every foreigner Who visited that island from without They seized as food--these famine-stricken men. This was the cruel practice of that folk, Mighty in wickedness, most savage foes: 30 With javelin points they poured upon the ground The jewel of the head, the eyes' clear sight; And after brewed for them a bitter draught-- These wizards by their magic--drink accursed, Which led astray the wits of hapless men, The heart within their breasts, until they grieved No longer for the happiness of men; Weary for food they fed on hay and grass.

When to this far-famed city Matthew came, 40 There rose great outcry through the sinful tribe, That cursed throng of Mermedonians. Soon as those servants of the Devil learned The noble saint was come unto their land, They marched against him, armed with javelins; Under their linden-shields they went in haste, Grim bearers of the lance, to meet the foe. They bound his hands; with foeman's cunning skill They made them fast--those warriors doomed to hell-- 50 With swords they pierced the jewel of his head. Yet in his heart he honored Heaven's King, Though of the drink envenomed he had drunk, Of virtue terrible; steadfast and glad, With courage unabashed, he worshiped still The Prince of glory, King of heaven above; And from the prison rose his holy voice. Within his noble breast the praise of Christ Stood fast imprinted; weeping tears of woe, With sorrowful voice of mourning he addressed 60 His Lord victorious, speaking thus in words:-- "Behold how these fierce strangers knit for me A chain of mischief, an ensnaring net. Ever have I been zealous in my heart To do Thy will in all things; now in grief The life of the dumb cattle I must lead. Thou, Lord, alone, Creator of mankind, Dost know the hidden thoughts of every heart. O Prince of glory, if it be thy will 70 That with the sword's keen edge perfidious men Put me at rest, I am prepared straightway To suffer whatsoever Thou, my Lord, Who givest bliss to that high angel-band, Shalt send me as my portion in this world, A homeless wanderer, O Lord of hosts. In mercy grant to me, Almighty God, Light in this life, lest, blinded in this town By hostile swords, I needs must longer bear Reviling words, the grievous calumny Of slaughter-greedy men, of hated foes. 80 On Thee alone, Protector of the world, I fix my mind, my heart's unfailing love; So, Father of the angels, Lord of hosts, Bright Giver of all bliss, to Thee I pray, That Thou appoint me not among my foes, Artificers of wrong forever damned, The death most grievous on this earth of Thine."