The Siðgeomor Speaker and his Sources, in Cynewulf's The Fates of the Apostles

Extract

THE shortest of Cynewulf's signed poems, The Fates of the Apostles, narrates the deaths of Christ's twelve chosen thegns: the location and details of each martyrdom are briefly recounted, with references to the apostles’ posthumous glory in heaven. It has long been argued that Cynewulf derived his information about the apostles’ deaths from martyrologies or extended passiones of individual apostles and that the poem's catalogue-like structure was influenced by the litanies of the saints.¹ Since no direct source text has been discovered for the poem, it is generally assumed that Cynewulf's knowledge of the apostles’ martyrdoms was drawn from his own experience with the liturgy, which may have been supplemented with private readings of Latin hagiography under a monastic programme of study.²

The introductory lines of the poem, however, suggest an additional possibility. Fates opens with the speaker's own account of its composition:

Hwæt, ic þysne sang siðgeomor fand

on seocum sefan, samnode wide

hu þa æðelingas ellen cyðdon

torhte ond tireadige.

(Lo! Sorrowful at the end of my journey and sick at heart, I discovered this song, collected widely how the nobles—bright and glorious—performed deeds of courage.)³

The speaker's professed maladies—he is siðgeomor, on seocum sefan—have been tentatively explained as a poetic trope that reflects his old age or his anxiety about dying.⁴ This explanation is a logical one based on the final section of the poem, in which the speaker anticipates his final journey:

… þonne ic sceal langne ham,

eardwic uncuð, ana gesecan,

lætan me on laste lic, eorðan dæl,

wælreaf wunigean weormum to hroðre.

(… when I, alone, shall seek the long home, the unknown dwelling; leave my body behind me—this portion of earth, this spoil of the slain—to remain as a joy for the worms. Lines 92–5)

Yet while professions of weakness and mortality are typical in the conclusions of Cynewulf's poems, only Fates introduces these themes in its opening lines; and while humility topoi are a familiar feature of prose works, the speaker's opening references to himself as siðgeomor and on seocum sefan are remarkable in the context of Old English heroic poetry.⁵