Part 1 (1/2)

Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew.

by Unknown.

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 n.o.bility, 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 aesthetic qualities.

In my diction I have sought after simple and idiomatic English, studying the n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sive 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-Wulker in the _Bibliothek der Angelsachsischen 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 Angelsachsen_), 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 ma.n.u.script; 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 Ma.n.u.script_.]

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

How did this ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script contained a poem about St. Andrew, it would have been an appropriate gift to St.

Andrew's Church in Vercelli. Wulker'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: _Authors.h.i.+p 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_ a.s.signed 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 authors.h.i.+p, and is sustained in his position by Sievers, though vigorously opposed by Ramhorst. More recently Trautman (_Anglia_, Beiblatt VI. 17) rea.s.serts 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 authors.h.i.+p, 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 ma.n.u.script is a.s.signed to the first half of the eleventh century.

[Sidenote: _Sources_.]

Fortunately we can speak with more a.s.surance 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.)]