[Footnote 1: Thorpe's translation of the _Genesis_, published with his
edition, in 1828, was not accessible to the present writer and
presumably will not be accessible to the general public, so that on the
mere score of availability it seems high time for the appearance of
another translation; moreover, in the last eighty-five years critical
scholarship has produced a greatly improved text of the poem.]

[Footnote 2: Aside from necessary omissions made for _Genesis B_, the
Sections are numbered consecutively in this translation (regardless of
vagaries in the original MS. numbering), on the assumption that each
illuminated capital in the MS. was intended to indicate the beginning of
a new Section. After the excision of _Genesis B_, the numbering has been
resumed with X instead of XV, because the XIII at line 440 in the MS.
must really represent VIII.--Cf. Note 8, page 59, inf. (page 199, inf.)]

[Footnote 3: ll. 39b-41a. _Wræcna_, gen. pl. with _bidan_, = _outcasts_; I
take _weardas_ as in apposition with it (the acc. being either a scribal
error or an anacoluthon), and then translate _wræcna_ as an adjective
for the sake of idiomatic fluency. For _gasta weardas_ as an epithet for
angels, though then unfallen, cf. line 12a, sup.--The passage has given
scholars much trouble and is unsatisfactory, at best.]

[Footnote 4: line 63b. I take æðele as a form of æðelu = nobilitas,
principatus, natales, origo, genus, etc. Grein's _Sprachschatz_, 1.52.]

[Footnote 5: line 168a. Three pages seem to be missing in the MS.
Doubtless the remaining events of the third day, with those of the
fourth, fifth, and perhaps first part of the sixth, days, including the
creation of man, (i.e., apparently the contents of Gen. 1.11-2.17,