Читать книгу History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne - Andrew Lang, Robert Kirk - Страница 17

In the "Andreas" the poet, whoever he was, sings of what he has heard, adventures of St. Andrew and St. Mark. St. Matthew has fallen into the hands of the cannibals of old Greek legend, the Læstrygonians, the poet calls them the "Mermedonians".3

The cannibals have caught, and are about to eat St. Matthew, but the Lord appears first to him, in his dungeon, and then to St. Andrew, who is living among the Achæans, in Greece. The voyage, the fighting, are in the old heathen style, and the Deity appears with two angels, all three disguised as sailors. It is impossible to give the whole tale, which appealed to the natural man as a great story of adventure in waves and war, while it introduced religion. The adventures are many, and much more startling and wild than any that survive from the Anglo-Saxon poetry of heathen times.