In the Exeter book there are two of this class of poems; St. Guthlac and St. Juliana. In St. Juliana, a characteristic passage is that in which the tempter visits her in the guise of an angel of light, advising her to yield and to sacrifice to the gods. At her prayer, the fiend is reduced to his own shape, reminding us of a famous passage in Milton. St. Guthlac is distressed by fiends, and among the trials to which he is exposed, one is this, that he sees in vision the evil life of a disorderly monastery. When he has endured his trials, and he returns to his chosen retreat, the welcome of the birds is very charming.
But the greatest pieces of this sort are the two in the Vercelli book; the Andreas and the Elene.
In the Andreas we have an ancient legend which is now known only in Greek, but which no doubt lay before the Anglo-Saxon poet in a Latin version. In this story Matthew is imprisoned in Mirmedonia, and he is encouraged by the hope that Andrew shall come to his aid. Andrew is wonderfully conveyed to Mirmedonia, where he arrives at a time of famine, and he finds the people casting lots who shall be slain for the others’ food. On the intervention of Andrew the devil comes on the scene and suggests that he is the cause of their troubles. Then follows a long series of tortures to which the saint is subjected. When his endurance has been put to extreme proof, the word of deliverance comes to him and he puts forth miraculous power. He calls for a flood, and it comes and sweeps the cruel persecutors away. But the whole ends in a general conversion, and the drowned are restored to life. He is escorted to his ship and has a happy voyage back to Achaia like the return of any hero crowned with success. Here we are reminded of the return of Beowulf; and widely different as the two poems are, they have not only points of similarity but also a certain likeness of type. There is, however, this great dissimilarity, that in the Andreas the poet stops to speak of himself and of his inadequate performance, but still he will give us a little more. The most novel and extraordinary part is the voyage of Andrew to Mirmedonia. The ship-master is a Divine person, and the instructive conversation which the saint addresses to him, is exceedingly well managed, for while it verges on the humorous, it is perfectly reverent; a strong contrast with the free use of such situations in the later mediæval drama. Another feature which calls for notice is the sarcasm with which the drowning people are told there is plenty of drink for them now.
The “Elene” opens with the outbreak of barbarian war, and Constantine in camp on the Danube, frightened at the multitude of the Huns. In a dream of the night he sees an angel who shows him the Cross, and tells him that with this “beacon” he shall overcome the foe. II. Comforted by his dream, he had a cross made like that of the vision, and under this ensign he was victorious. Then he assembles his wise men to inquire of them who the god was that this sign belonged to? No one knew, until some christened folk, who (according to this poet) were then very few, gave the required information. Constantine is baptised by Silvester. III. Zealous to recover the true Cross, he sends his mother, Elene, with a great equipment to Judea. IV. She proclaims an assembly, and 3,000 come together, and she requires of them to choose those who can answer whatever questions she may ask. V. They select 500 for that purpose. When they are come to the queen, she addresses a chiding speech to them about their blindness in rejecting Him who came according to prophecy; but she does not reveal her aim. Afterwards, the Jews in consternation discuss among themselves what the imperial lady can mean. At length one Judas divines that she wants the Cross which is hidden, and which it is of the greatest consequence to keep from discovery; for his grandfather Zacheus, when a-dying, told his son, the speaker’s father, that whenever that Cross was found the power of the Jews would end. VI. The speaker further said that his father told him the history of the Saviour’s life, and how his son Stephen had believed in him and had been stoned. The speaker was a boy when his father told him this, and seems to have thus learnt about his brother Stephen for the first time.[138] VII. When they are summoned into the imperial presence they all profess to know nothing about the subject of her inquiry, they had never heard of such a thing before! She threatens. Then they select Judas as a wise man who knows more than the rest, and they leave him as a hostage. VIII. The queen will know where the Rood is. Judas pleads that it all happened so long ago that he knows nothing about it. She says it was not so long ago as the Trojan war, and yet people know about that. When he persists, she orders him to be imprisoned and kept without food. He endures for six days, but on the seventh he yields. IX. Released from prison he leads the way to Calvary. He utters a fervent supplication in Hebrew, in which he pleads that He who in the famous times of old revealed to Moses the bones of Joseph would make known by a sign the place of the Rood, vowing to believe in Christ if his prayer is granted. X. A steam rises from the ground. There they dig, and at a depth of twenty feet three crosses are found. Which is the holy Rood? A dead man is carried by; Judas brings the corpse in contact with the crosses one after another, and the touch of the third restores life. XI. Satan laments that he has suffered a new defeat, which is all the harder as the agent is “Judas,” a name so friendly to him before! He threatens a persecuting king who shall make the newly-converted man renounce his faith. Judas returns a spirited answer, and Helena rejoices to hear the new convert rise superior to the Wicked one. XII. The report spreads, to the joy of Christians and the confusion of the Jews. The queen sends an embassy to the emperor at Rome with the happy tidings. The greatest curiosity was displayed in the cities on their road. Constantine, in his exaltation, sent them quickly back to Helena with instructions to build a church in their united names on the sacred spot of the discovery. The queen gathered from every side the most highly-skilled builders for the church; and she caused the holy Rood to be studded with gold and jewels, and then firmly secured in a chest of silver:—
XIII. Helena sends for Eusebius, “bishop of Rome,” and he, at her bidding, makes Judas bishop in Jerusalem, and changes his name to Cyriacus. Then she inquires after the nails of the crucifixion, and, at the prayer of Cyriacus, their hiding-place is revealed. When the nails were brought to the queen she wept aloud, and the fountain of her tears flowed over her cheeks and down upon the jewels of her apparel. XIV. She seeks guidance by oracle as to the disposal of the nails. She is directed to make of them rings for the bridle of the chief of earthly kings. He who rides to war with such a bridle should be invincible; and a prophecy to that effect is quoted! Helena obeys, and sends the bridle over sea to Constantine,—“no contemptible gift!” Helena assembles the chief men of the Jews, bids them submit to Cyriacus, and keep up the anniversary of the Finding of the Cross. Finally, for those who keep the day is proclaimed a benediction so unmeasured and profuse as to leave behind it an air in which the solemn evaporates in the histrionic.
Here more than in any other piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry we feel near the mediæval drama. Almost every canto is like a scene; and little adaptation would be required to put it upon the stage. The narrative at the beginning is like a prologue, and then after the close of the piece we have an epilogue, in which the author speaks about himself, and weaves his name with Runes into the verses in the manner already described.
The briefest fragment in the Vercelli book is about False Friendship; and it contains a long-drawn simile in which the bee is rather hardly treated.
The “Runic Poem”[139] is a string of epigrams on the characters of the Runic alphabet, beginning with F, U, Þ, O, R, C, according to that primitive order, whence that alphabet was called the “Futhorc.” Each of these characters has a name with a meaning, mostly of some well-known familiar thing, apt subject for epigram.