YALE STUDIES IN ENGLISH
ALBERT S. COOK, EDITOR
LXIII
THE
OLD ENGLISH PHYSIOLOGUS
TEXT AND PROSE TRANSLATION
BY
ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK
Professor of the English Language and Literature in Yale University
VERSE TRANSLATION
BY
JAMES HALL PITMAN
Fellow in English of Yale University
NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MDCCCXXI
[FACSIMILE]
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 sea-monster 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. 17.11 (the texts drawn
upon for the application in lines 5-11 are 2 Cor. 6.17,18; Isa. 55.7;
Heb. 2.10,11).
It has been said: 'With the exception of the Bible, there is perhaps no
other book in all literature that has been more widely current in every
cultivated tongue and among every class of people.' Such currency might
be illustrated from many English authors. Two passages from Elizabethan
literature may serve as specimens--the one from Spenser, the other from
Shakespeare. The former is from the _Faerie Queene_ (1. 11.34):
At last she saw, where he upstarted brave
Out of the well, wherein he drenched lay;
As Eagle fresh out of the Ocean wave,
Where he hath left his plumes all hoary gray,
And deckt himselfe with feathers youthly gay,
Like Eyas hauke up mounts unto the skies,
His newly budded pineons to assay,
And marveiles at himselfe, still as he flies:
So new this new-borne knight to battell new did rise.
The other is from _Hamlet_ (Laertes to the King):
To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
And like the kind life-rendering pelican,
Repast them with my blood.[1]
However widely diffused, the symbolism exemplified by the _Physiologus_
is peculiarly at home in the East. Thus Egypt symbolized the sun, with
his death at night passing into a rebirth, by the phœnix, which, by a
natural extension, came to signify the resurrection. And the Bible not
only sends the sluggard to the ant, and bids men consider the lilies of
the field, but with a large sweep commands (Job 12.7,8): 'Ask now the
beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they
shall tell thee; or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee; and the
fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.'
[Footnote 1: Alfred de Musset, in _La Nuit de Mai_, develops the image
of the pelican through nearly thirty lines.]
The text as here printed is extracted from my edition, _The Old English
Elenc, Phœnix, and Physiologus_ (Yale University Press, 1919), where a
critical apparatus may be found; here it may be sufficient to say that
Italic letters in square brackets denote my emendations, and Roman
letters those of previous editors. The translations have not hitherto
been published, and no complete ones are extant in any language, save
those contained in Thorpe's edition of the _Codex Exoniensis_, which
appeared in 1842. The long conjectural passage in the _Partridge_ is due
wholly to Mr. Pitman.