Summing up, then, we have the homily and the poem agreeing in
some important points in which both differ from the Greek, but so
dissimilar in other points that neither could have been the source of
the other. In the light of these similarities and variations, and of
others which space prevents me from mentioning, we must suppose the
homily to have been taken from an abridgment of the Latin version, of
which the poet saw a somewhat corrupt copy. It is also not improbable
that this Latin version may have been made from a Greek manuscript
varying in some details from the legend as it appears in Tischendorf's
edition. This view is sustained by a Syrian translation, which in some
respects agrees with our hypothetical Latin version. But this Latin
version has never been discovered, though some fragments of the legend
are found in the Latin of Pseudo-Abdias and the _Legenda Aurea_,[1]
which curiously enough supply several of the facts missing in the
Greek, namely, that Andrew was teaching in Achaia, and that the land
of the Anthropophagi was called Mermedonia.

[Footnote 1: Grimm, _Andreas und Elene_, XIII-XVI.]

So much for the sources of the poem as a whole. The poet is also
deeply indebted to the _Beowulf_ and to the poems of Cynewulf (unless
he be Cynewulf himself) for lines and phrases throughout his work.
One example of this borrowing will suffice. In line 999, when Andrew
reaches the prison, we read (translating literally): "The door quickly
opened at the touch of the holy saint's hand." In the Greek: "And he
made the sign of the cross upon the door, and it opened of its own
accord." Why has the poet omitted the sign of the cross? We are unable
to answer until we read in the _Beowulf_ (721) that at the coming of
the monster Grendel to Heorot "the door quickly opened ... soon as he