YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH ALBERT S. COOK, EDITOR LXIII THE OLD ENGLISH PHYSIOLOGUS TEXT AND PROSE TRANSLATION BY ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK VERSE TRANSLATION BY JAMES HALL PITMAN Fellow in English of Yale University אורים VX ET VERITAS NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCXXI 31 01-12-22 le.w. PREFACE The Old English Physiologus, or Bestiary, is a series of three brief poems, dealing with the mythical traits of a land-animal, a sea-beast, and a bird respectively, and deducing from them certain moral or religious lessons. These three creatures are selected from a much larger number treated in a work of the same name which was compiled at Alexandria before 140 B. C., originally in Greek, and afterwards translated into a variety of languages-into Latin before 431. The standard form of the Physiologus has 49 chapters, each dealing with a separate animal (sometimes imaginary) or other natural object, beginning with the lion, and ending with the ostrich; examples of these are the pelican, the eagle, the phoenix, the ant (cf. Prov. 6.6), the fox, the unicorn, and the salamander. In this standard text, the Old English poems are represented by chapters 16, 17, and 18, dealing in succession with the panther, a mythical seamonster called the asp-turtle (usually denominated the whale), and the partridge. Of these three poems, the third is so fragmentary that little is left except eight lines of religious application, and four of exhortation by the poet, so that the outline of the poem, and especially the part descriptive of the partridge, must be conjecturally restored by reference to the treatment in the fuller versions, which are based upon Jer. 17. II (the texts drawn upon for the application in lines 5-11 are 2 Cor. 6. 17, 18; Isa. 55.7; Heb. 2. 10, 11). |