Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew Part 1

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: _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_ 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 authorship, 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 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 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.)]

[Footnote 2: See 369-381.]

Daybreak and sunset, too, are described with much beauty, and in one pa.s.sage 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d, 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 ash.o.r.e 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sume 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[=ae]l_ ("shaft of the devil"), and in the homily also the same word (_str[=ae]l_) is found. But in the corresponding pa.s.sage 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, a.s.suming 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 fur Deutsches Altertum_, x.x.x. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.n.u.script 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 cla.s.ses: 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-Caedmon, the _Judith_, and the _Andreas_.