PREFACE
This translation was made from the edition of the Elene issued by Charles W. Kent in 1889 (Ginn & Co., Boston). His text is ‘that of Zupitza’s second edition, carefully compared with Wülker’s edition and Zupitza’s third edition, in which the results of Napier’s collation are contained.’
The aim of this translation is to give an accurate and readable modern English prose rendering of the Old English poetry. The translation of Richard Francis Weymouth, entitled A Literal Translation of Cynewulf’s Elene, has been at hand, but I owe it practically nothing in this work. While I trust that my rendering has not departed so far from the text that it will be valueless to the student, yet at places it will be found that I have to some extent expanded or contracted the literal translation in the hope of benefiting the modern English version.
My thanks are due to Dr. Robert K. Root and Dr. Chauncey B. Tinker of Yale University, and to Dr. Charles H. Whitman of Lehigh University, for examining part of the work in manuscript, and to Dr. Albert S. Cook of Yale University for a careful reading of the proof.
New Haven,
January 1, 1904.
