Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dr | Page 3

I would refer to Brandl's _Sonderausgabe aus der
zweiten Auflage von Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie_
(Strassburg, 1908), in which I find noted Holthausen's edition of the
ELENE (Heidelberg, 1905), but I have not seen it.
I take advantage of this opportunity to say that my translation of
BÉOWULF, of which the last reprint was issued in 1910, is not in
prose, as some have misconceived it, but it is in the same metrical form
as the translations in the present volume,--an accentual metre in rough
imitation of the original. I agree with Professor Gummere and others
that this is a better form for the translation of Old English poetry than
plain prose. It was approved by the late Professor Child nearly thirty
years ago, as noted in the Preface to the second edition of my
translation of BÉOWULF, January, 1885.
JAMES M. GARNETT.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND,
February, 1911.
INTRODUCTION.
In presenting to the public the following translations of the Old English
(Anglo-Saxon) poems, ELENE, JUDITH, ATHELSTAN,
BYRHTNOTH, and THE DREAM OF THE ROOD, it is desirable to
prefix a brief account of them for the information of the general reader.
I. The ELENE, or Helena, is a poem on the expedition of the Empress
Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, to
Palestine in search of the true cross, and its successful issue. The

mediæval legend of the Finding of the Cross is given in the _Acta
Sanctorum_ under date of May 4, assigned by the Church to the
commemoration of St. Helena's marvellous discovery. The Latin work
is the Life of St. Quiriacus, or Cyriacus, Bishop of Jerusalem, that is,
the Judas of the poem. It has been usually thought that the Old English
poet used this Life as his source; but Glöde, in a recent volume of
Anglia (IX. 271 ff.), has given reasons for thinking that the poet used
some other Latin text. He rejects ten Brink's conjecture that the legend
of Elene had come to England in a Greek form. As to the author of the
poem, we know his name, but very little else about him. He has left us
his name, imbedded in runic letters as an acrostic, in the last canto of
the poem, q.v. These letters spell the word CYNEWULF; but who was
Cynewulf? The question is hard to answer, and has given rise to much
discussion, which cannot be gone into here. A good summary of it will
be found in Wülker's _Grundriss zur Geschichte der Angelsächsischen
Litteratur_ (p. 147 ff., 1885), an indispensable work for students of Old
English literature. The old view, propounded in the infancy of
Anglo-Saxon studies, and held by Kemble, Thorpe, and, doubtfully,
Wright, that he was the Abbot of Peterborough and Bishop of
Winchester (992-1008), has been abandoned by all scholars, so far as I
know, except Professor Earle of Oxford (see his "Anglo-Saxon
Literature," p. 228). The later view of Leo, Dietrich, Grein and Rieger,
our chief authorities, that he was a Northumbrian, and of Dietrich and
Grein, that he was Bishop of Lindisfarne (737-780), has more to be said
for it. Sweet and ten Brink also hold that he was a Northumbrian of the
eighth century, but not the Bishop of Lindisfarne, while Wülker regards
him as a West-Saxon. Professor Henry Morley, in the current edition of
his "English Writers," has devoted a chapter (Vol. II. Chap. IX., 1888)
to Cynewulf, and virtually concludes that we know nothing about him
except that he was a poet and probably lived in the eighth century. We
shall not go far wrong in regarding him as a Northumbrian poet of the
eighth century, possibly the Bishop of Lindisfarne, even though his
works remain to us only in the West-Saxon dialect. As in the ELENE,
so in the CHRIST and the JULIANA, Cynewulf has left us his name,
hence all agree in ascribing to him these poems at least. To these some
of the RIDDLES, if not all, are usually added, but this is now contested.
Other poems, as the GUTHLAC, PHOENIX, CHRIST'S DESCENT

INTO HELL, ANDREAS, DREAM OF THE ROOD, and several other
shorter poems, have been ascribed to him with more or less probability,
and very recently Sarrazin (in Anglia, IX. 515 ff.) would credit him
with the authorship of even the BÉOWULF(!). We might as well assign
to him, as has been suggested, all the poems in the two great
manuscripts, the Exeter Book and the Vercelli Book, and be done with
it. It is desirable that his authorship of the DREAM OF THE ROOD,
which ten Brink and Sweet assign to him, but Wülker rejects, should be
proved or disproved; for with this is connected the question of his
Northumbrian origin, and some lines from this poem have been
inscribed in the Northumbrian