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.’
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.
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Monge sindon geond middangeard
wrǣtlīc[um] gecynd[e] wildra secgan, |
Of living creatures many are the kinds
From men of wider lore of one wild beast, |
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Many, yea numberless, are the tribes throughout the world whose natures we can not rightly expound nor their multitudes reckon, so immense are the swarms of birds and earth-treading animals wherever water, the roaring ocean, the surge of salt billows, encompasses the smiling bosom of earth. We have heard about one marvelous kind of wild beast which inhabits, in lands far off, a domain renowned among men, rejoicing there in his home amid the mountain-caves. This beast is called panther, as the learned | |
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wīsfæste weras, on gewritum cȳþa[ð]
duguða ēstig, būtan dracan ānum;
Ðæt is wrǣtlīc dēor, wundrum scȳne, |
The panther, and in books have told of him,
A bounteous friend to every living thing
And wonderful of hue. The holy scribes His wondrous character is mild, and free |
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among the children of men report in their books concerning that lonely wanderer. He is a friend, bountiful in kindness, to every one save only the dragon; with him he always lives at enmity by means of every injury he can inflict. He is a bewitching animal, marvelously beautiful with every color. Just as, according to men holy in spirit, Joseph’s coat was variegated with hues of every shade, each shining before the sons of men brighter and more perfect than another, so does the color of this beast blaze with every diversity, gleaming in wondrous wise so clear and fair that each tint is ever lovelier than the next, glows more enchanting in its splendor, more rare, more beauteous, and more strange. He has a nature all his own, so gentle and so calm is | |
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milde, gemetfæst. Hē is monþwǣre,
35 Symle, fylle fægen, þonne fōddor þigeð, |
From all disturbing passion. Gracious, kind,
His heart with feasting, straight he finds a nook |
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it. Kind, attractive, and friendly, he has no thought of doing harm to any save the envenomed foe, his ancient adversary of whom I spoke. When, delighting in a feast, he has partaken of food, ever at the end of the meal he betakes himself to his resting-place, a hidden retreat among the mountain-caves; there the champion of his race, overcome by sleep, abandons himself to slumber for the space of three nights. Then the dauntless one, replenished with vigor, straightway arises from sleep when the third day has come. A melody, the most ravishing of strains, flows from the wild beast’s mouth; and, following the music, there issues a fragrance from the place—a fume more transporting, sweet, and strong than any odor whatever, than blossoms of plants or fruits of the forest, choicer | |
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Þonne of ceastrum and cynestōlum
55 Swā is Dryhten God, drēama Rǣdend, |
Than all this world’s adornments. Then from town
Such as this creature is the Lord our God, |
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than aught that clothes the earth with beauty. Thereupon from cities, courts, and castle-halls many companies of heroes flock along the highways of earth; the wielders of the spear press forward in hurrying throngs to that perfume—and so also do animals—when once the music has ceased. Even so the Lord God, the Giver of joy, is gracious to all creatures, to every order of them, save only the dragon, the source of venom, that ancient enemy whom he bound in the abyss of torments; shackling him with fiery fetters, and loading him with dire constraints, he arose from darkness on the third day after he, the Lord of angels, the Bestower of victory, had for three nights endured death on our behalf. That was a sweet perfume throughout the world, winsome and entrancing. Henceforth, | |
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on healfa gehwone, hēapum þrungon |
From every side all men whose hearts were true, |
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through the whole extent of earth’s regions, righteous men have streamed in multitudes from every side to that fragrance. As said the wise St. Paul: ‘Manifold over the world are the lavish bounties which the Father almighty, the Hope of all creatures above and below, bestows on us as grace and salvation.’ That, too, is a sweet odor. | |
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Nū ic fitte gēn ymb fisca cynn
Is þæs hīw gelīc hrēofum stāne, |
Now will I spur again my wit, and use
Dun, like rough stone in color, as he floats |
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This time I will with poetic art rehearse, by means of words and wit, a poem about a kind of fish, the great sea-monster which is often unwillingly met, terrible and cruel-hearted to seafarers, yea, to every man; this swimmer of the ocean-streams is known as the asp-turtle. His appearance is like that of a rough boulder, as if there were tossing by the shore a great ocean-reedbank begirt with sand-dunes, so that seamen imagine they are gazing upon an island, and moor their high-prowed ships with cables to that false land, make fast the ocean-coursers at the sea’s end, and, bold of heart, climb up | |
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and þonne in þæt ēglond ūp gewītað
On þām ēalonde ǣled weccað,
dēofla wīse, þæt hī droht[i]ende |
The weary-hearted sailors mount the isle,
Elated, on the sands they build a fire,
Of demons, devils’ wiles: to hide their power, |
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on that island; the vessels stand by the beach, enringed by the flood. The weary-hearted sailors then encamp, dreaming not of peril. On the island they start a fire, kindle a mounting flame. The dispirited heroes, eager for repose, are flushed with joy. Now when the cunning plotter feels that the seamen are firmly established upon him, and have settled down to enjoy the weather, the guest of ocean sinks without warning into the salt wave with his prey (?), and makes for the bottom, thus whelming ships and men in that abode of death. Such is the way of demons, the wont of devils: they spend their lives in outwitting men by their secret power, inciting them to the corruption of good deeds, misguiding | |
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frōfre tō fēondum, oþþæt hy fæste ðǣr
50 wæterþisa wlonc, wrǣtlīcran gīen. |
From unsuspected foes, until at last
This proud sea-swimmer, still more marvelous. |
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them at will so that they seek help and support from fiends, until they end by making their fixed abode with the betrayer. When, from out his living torture, the crafty, malicious enemy perceives that any one is firmly settled within his domain, he proceeds, by his malignant wiles, to become the slayer of that man, be he rich or poor, who sinfully does his will; and, covered by his cap of darkness, suddenly betakes himself with them to hell, where naught of good is found, a bottomless abyss shrouded in misty gloom—like that monster which engulfs the ocean-traversing men and ships.' This proud tosser of the waves has another and still more wonderful trait. When hunger plagues him on the deep, and the monster longs for food, this haunter of the sea opens his mouth, and sets his lips agape; | |
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wīde weleras; cymeð wynsum stenc
se þe oftost his unwærlīce, |
His monstrous lips; and from his cavernous maw
So, in this fleeting earthly time, each man |
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whereupon there issues a ravishing perfume from his inwards, by which other kinds of fish are beguiled. With lively motions they swim to where the sweet odor comes forth, and there enter in, a heedless host, until the wide gorge is full; then, in one instant, he snaps his fierce jaws together about the swarming prey. Thus it is with any one who, in this fleeting time, full oft neglects to take heed to his life, and allows himself to be enticed by sweet fragrance, a lying lure, so that he becomes hostile to the King of glory by reason of his sins. The accursed one will, when they die, throw wide the doors of hell to those who, in their folly, have wrought the treacherous delights of the body, contrary to the wise guidance of the soul. When the deceiver, skilful in wrongdoing, hath brought into that fastness, | |
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æt þām [ā]dwylme, þā þe him on cleofiað,
Forþon is eallinga . . . . . . . . . . . |
With evil craft has led those erring ones
And[2]] altogether [right for each of us |
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the lake of fire, those that cleave to him and are laden with guilt, such as had eagerly followed his teachings in the days of their life, he then, after their death, snaps tight together his fierce jaws, the gates of hell. They who enter there have neither relief nor escape, no means of flight, any more than the fishes that swim the sea can escape from the clutch of the monster. Therefore is it by all means [best for every one of us to serve[2]] the Lord of lords, and strive against devils with words and works, that so we may come to behold the King of glory. Let us ever, now in this fleeting time, seek from him grace and salvation, that so with the Beloved we may in worship enjoy the bliss of heaven for evermore. | |
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Hȳrde ic secgan gēn bi sumum fugle |
About another creature have I heard
Fair is that word the Lord of glory spoke: |
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So, too, I have heard tell a wondrous [tale[4]] about a certain bird.[5] … fair the word[6] spoken by the King of glory: ‘At whatsoever time ye turn to me with faith in your soul, and forsake the black iniquities of hell, I will turn straightway to you with love, in the gentleness of my heart; and thenceforth ye shall be reckoned to | |
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10 torhte, tīrēadge, talade and rīmde,
Uton wē þȳ geornor Gode ōliccan, Finit.
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Refulgent, glorious, numbered with the host
Be taught to please God better, hating sin, Finit.
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me as glorious and renowned, as my illustrious brethren, yea, in the place of children.’ Let us therefore propitiate God with all zeal, abhor evil, and gain forgiveness and salvation from the Lord while for us the day still shines, so that thus we may, in glorious beauty, inhabit a dwelling excellent beyond compare. Finit. | |