Preface

The Old English Physiologus, or Bestiary, is a series of three briefpoems, dealing with the mythical traits of a land-animal, a sea-beast,and a bird respectively, and deducing from them certain moral orreligious lessons. These three creatures are selected from a much largernumber treated in a work of the same name which was compiled atAlexandria before 140 B. C., originally in Greek, and afterwardstranslated into a variety of languages—into Latin before 431. Thestandard form of the Physiologus has 49 chapters, each dealing with aseparate animal (sometimes imaginary) or other natural object, beginningwith the lion, and ending with the ostrich; examples of these are thepelican, the eagle, the phoenix, the ant (cf. Prov. 6.6), the fox, theunicorn, and the salamander. In this standard text, the Old Englishpoems are represented by chapters 16, 17, and 18, dealing in successionwith the panther, a mythical sea-monster called the asp-turtle (usuallydenominated the whale), and the partridge. Of these three poems, thethird is so fragmentary that little is left except eight lines ofreligious application, and four of exhortation by the poet, so that theoutline of the poem, and especially the part descriptive of thepartridge, must be conjecturally restored by reference to the treatmentin the fuller versions, which are based upon Jer. 17. 11 (the texts drawnupon 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 noother book in all literature that has been more widely current in everycultivated tongue and among every class of people.’ Such currency mightbe illustrated from many English authors. Two passages from Elizabethanliterature may serve as specimens—the one from Spenser, the other fromShakespeare. 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
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