Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew | Page 2

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