Albert Stanburrough Cook

The Old English Physiologus: Text and Prose Translation (Classic Reprint) Albert Stanburrough Cook

Publisher Marketing: Excerpt from The Old English Physiologus: d104 and Prose Translation 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 ph nix, the ant (cf. Prov. 6.6), the fox, the unicorn, and thesalamander. In this standard text, the Old English poems are represented by chapters 16, 17, and is, 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 lives 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). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."