CAIN Legends of Cain Emerson Oliver F.

Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in the World
This article is one of nearly 500,000 scholarly works digitized and made freely available to everyone in
the world by JSTOR.
Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other
writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the
mid-‐seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.
We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this
resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non-‐commercial
purposes.
Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.jstor.org/participate-‐jstor/individuals/early-‐

journal-‐content.
JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people
discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching
platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-‐for-‐profit
organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact [email protected].
XIX.-LEGENDS OF CAIN, ESPECIALLY IN OLD
AND MIDDLE ENGLISH.
An examination, some time since, of scattered notes on

allusions to Cain in our literature showed that there was
still room for a somewhat more thorough investigation of
the subject. The results of such leisure as could be given
from time to time are here presented. They cover, it is
hoped, the main features of the Cain story, though not
unlikely some allusions have been missed. Many more
references might also be given to notes on various phases
of the subject, but I have preferred not to overload the
footnotes with comparatively unimportant ones. In general
I have intended to give the more important, preferring
earlier to later, and original to derived sources when possi-
ble. Lack of time to pursue the matter further at present
is the excuse for publishing the paper in this form.'
The legends connected with Cain may be classed under
the following heads: I. Cain's Origin; II. The Sacrifice;
III. The Murder of Abel; IV. The Curse and the Mark
of Cain; V. The Death of Cain; VI. Cain's Descendants.
These will be discussed in order, and especially the allusions
to them in our older literature. References to some of them
'As originally written the paper was read before the Modern Language
Association at Philadelphia in 1900. Since that time some additions have
been made and the whole has been revised. There has been, however, no
essential modification of the principal results of the original study. Yet
special mention should be made of a monograph by Dr. Louis Ginzberg,
Die Haggada bei den Kirchenvitern und in der apochryphischenLitteratur,
which has been of special assistance in connection with Hebrew tradition.
Though printed in the same year as the reading of this paper I had not
seen it when the paper was written. Dr. Ginzberg has also furnished me
valuable information in one or two letters.
831
832 OLIVER F. EMERSON.
not directly alluded to in English may be im ortant in

explaining passages not here noticed. No special attempt
has been made to gather allusions from other literatures,
though some such are given when of special value in explain-
ing those of English. In accounting for legendary additions
to the Bible story special search has been made of early
Christian writings and, so far as possible, of Rabbinical lore
when there was reason to believe that source had been
drawn upon. In the latter case it is not always easy to
prove direct connection. Yet the use of Hebrew tradition
in explaining difficult passages of Scripture is so well
known, that connection may usually be assumed as fairly
certain.
I. CAIN'S ORIGIN.
The biblical account of Cain as the son of Adam and

Eve was much extended by Hebrew tradition. In the first
place men felt that something more than human depravity
was necessary, to account for such an extraordinary crime as
murder in the comparative innocence of the early world.
Rabbinical lore even went so far as to assert that Cain was
the son, not of Adam, but of the devil. A suggestion of
this occurs in I John 3, 12, which reads, "Not as Cain,
who was of that wicked one and slew his brother." This
passage alone, whether based on Hebrew legend or not, is
sufficient to account for many references to the devilish
character of Cain. By another account Cain was born in
the period of transgression following the fall, and before the
repentance of Adam and Eve. Or Cain's character was
attributed to that of Eve, who suffered more than her share
of opprobrium at the hands of early Christian and medieval
commentators.
The tradition that Cain was the son of a devil does not
seem to have been used by English writers. If known, it
LEGENDS OF CAIN. 833
was doubtless felt to be too much at variance with Scripture,

though it may have colored later allusions to Cain or his
descendants. Indeed, it may almost seem to be implied by
a passage in the Ormulum:
Caym Adamess sune toc nib 3senAbsel hiss bro>err,

Off katt he sahh katt he wass god, annd rihhtwis mann annd clene,
Forr defless lewwess hafenn a33strang nij 3senCristess Jewwess.1
Perhaps there is also a suggestion of it in one of the Scottish

Satirical Poems of the Reformation. In No. xlv, the Legend
of Bischop of Androis Lyfe, occur these lines:
This Adamsone may weill be borne of Eve,
Takand his vices of his wicked mother;
Likkest to father Adam, I believe,
Surpassing Cain cursed or any uther.2
The above passage at least emphasizes the evil nature of

our first parents after the fall, and thus approaches the idea
of Cain's birth in the period of transgression. Such an
idea was frequently alluded to. Thus, in the Middle Eng-
lish Genesis, Adam and Eve, after leaving Eden, were in
sorrow and care, and thought they ought to live apart:
On sundri Thenken he to ben,
And neiSere on oler sen.3
Even when commanded by an angel to live together, they

do so
More for erneste Wanfor gamen (1. 411).
The idea is more elaborated in Piers Plowman, allusion

being made to it in all the texts. The fullest, in Text A,
passus x, 135 f., reads as follows:
1Holt's ed., 11. 14456 f.

2Scot. Text Soc., ed. by Jas. Cranstoun, 1. 97.
Early Eng. Text Soc. 7, 11. 393-4.
Fals folk and feiPles, theoves and ly3ers,

Ben conseyvet in curset tyme, as Caym was on Eve,
After Pat Adam and Eve hedden eten of Pe appel,
A3eyn Pe heste of him Pat hem of nou3t made.
An angel in haste pennes hem tornde
Into his wrecchede world, to wonnen and to libben
In tene and in travaile to here lives ende;
In hat corsede constellacion pei knewen togedere,
And brou3ten fork a barn Pat muche bale wrou3te;
Caym men cleped him, in cursed tyme engendret,
And so seip the sauter, seo hit whon pe likep,
Concepitin dolore, et peperit iniquitatem, etc.'
To these may be added one late allusion. Whether Byron

knew of these medieval conceptions or not, he virtually
makes use of the same idea in his Cain I, 1, when he makes
Eve say after one of Cain's rebellious speeches,
My boy, thou speakest as I spoke, in sin,

Before thy birth; let me not see renewed
My misery in thine. I have repented.
The period of transgression following the fall was con-

siderably elaborated by apochryphal writers and these have
influenced English works. In the Life of Adam and Eve,
usually called Canticum Creatione,2there is a full account of
an apochryphal transgression of Eve while both she and
Adam are in penance for the sin of the garden. They have
separated, Adam to stand forty-seven days in the Jordan
river and Eve as many in the Tigris. The devil persuades
1Early Eng. Text Soc., 28, 117. Upon this passage (EETS. 67, 225)
Prof. Skeat quotes Wright's brief note regarding a popular legend of the
Middle Ages on Cain's birth in the period of transgression, though with-
out showing its connection with Hebrew tradition. He adds, "Petrus
Comestor says: 'Adam cognovit uxorem suam, sed non in paradiso et
ejectus.'" The passage from the C Text of Piers Plowman will be found
on p. 900 of this paper.
2 Horstmann, Sammlungaltenglischer
legenden; Trin. Ms., p. 126, 1. 140 f.;
Auch. Ms., p. 141, 1. 235 f. ; Vern. MS., p. 223.
Eve to leave her place of penance, pretending that he and

other angels had prayed for her and obtained remission of
further suffering. He goes with her to Adam, who at once
exposes the tempter's true character. In grief Eve goes
into the wilderness to perform a new penance, is finally
received again by Adam, and is told by angels to prepare
for the birth of Cain.' With this summary the story, which
is long and in three forms, need not be quoted.
SOURCES.
That Cain was a son of the devil is directly stated in

Pirke Rabbi Eliezar xxi, 6.1 Bartolocci (Bibliotheca Magna
Rabbinica I, 291) also quotes Ialkut Sect. Berescith, p. 26,
as follows:
"lngreditur ad Evam (nempe Samael) equitans super serpentem, et
gravidavit ear Caino."
In speaking of the demons Bartolocci again says:
"Primus eorum parens assignatur angelus, qui pulchritudine Evae
illictus, equitans super serpentem ad ear ingreditur, ex quo concepit
Kaim, cuius figuram ut et illius posteritatis non humanum, sed angelicum
fuisse autumant." 2
The general character of these legends may be gathered

from Baring-Gould's Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets,
ch. vi:
"According to some Rabbis, all good souls are derived from Abel, and
all bad souls from Cain. Cain's soul was derived from Satan, his body
alone was from Eve; for the evil spirit Samael according to some, Satan
according to others, deceived Eve and thus Cain was the son of the evil
one." 3
1 So referred in Jewish Eneyclopcedia,article Cain; Ginzberg, Die Haggada

bei den Kirchenvdternund in der apochryphischenLitteratur, p. 59. See also
Bayle, Dict. Hist., articles Eve, Cain.
2 Bibliotheca
Magna Rabbinica, I, 290.
3 Based on Eisenmenger, EntdecktesJudenthum,II, 8.
6
836 OLIVER F. fIMERSON.
Such a belief, so baldly stated at least, does not seem to

occur in the early Fathers. It was probably felt to be too
much at variance with Scripture record, and indeed usually
appears as a heresy to be refuted. As the latter it is found
in Epiphanius, Hceres. 40, 5, and Irenaeus, Hceres. I, 30, 7.1
Philaster also mentions it as a heresy of the Cainites in Liber
de Hceresibus, cap. ii):
"Caiani .... dicentes ex altera vertute, id est diaboli, Cain factum."
On this a note in Migne (12, 1115-6) reads as follows:

"In Pirke R. Eliezar dicitur Cain Sammaelis progenies, atque ab allis
Rabbinis apud Gaulminum de morte Moysis, p. 216, traditur ex semine
primi serpentis natus Magiae per serpentes auctor."
The devil origin of Cain was also a Manichaeanheresy,
and this is perhaps an added reason why it was not received
by orthodox Christians. Compare Harnack, History of
Dogma, tr. by Buchanan, III, 125. On the other hand
Tertullian seems to state the belief in definite language. In
De Patientia, cap. 5, he says of Eve:
"Nam statim illa semine diaboli concepta, malitiae fecunditate, iram
[read irae] filium procreavit." 2
Most of the Fathers, however, speak of Cain as a son
of the devil only in a metaphorical sense. For this they had
Scripture authority in 1 John iii, 12, already mentioned.
Such a passage evoked the following comment of Augustine
(In Epistolam Joannis ad Parthos, Tractatus, v, cap. iii).
After discussing the characteristicsof Cain and Abel he says:
"Et hinc apparuit quia filius erat diaboli, et ille [Abel] hinc apparuit
justus Dei." 3
In a similar way comment on John 8, 44 makes Cain a
1 References from
Ginzberg above.
2Reference is by Ginzberg, Die Haggada, as above, p. 59.
3Cf. also
Bede, Exegeticain EpistolamJoannis (Migne, 93, 102) ; Martinus
Legionensis, Expositio in Epistolam 1 B. Joannis (Migne, 209, 270).
son of the devil, as in Quaestiones ex Novo Testamento of

Augustine:
"Diabolus non speciale nomen est, sed commune cum caeteris ....
Itaque hoc in loco patrem Judaeorum Cain significat.... Hoc ergo in
loco diabolum Cain esse dixit." 1
Yet even from such allusions the popular mind might easily
have assumed the essential connection of Cain with the
devil, if not in the exact sense of Hebrew tradition. It
would not be unreasonable to suppose, therefore, a somewhat
wider extension of the idea in medieval homilies and more
popular works.
That Cain was born after the fall is of course biblical.
Yet the Fathers emphasized especially the chastity of our
first parents before the transgression. Compare, for example,
Jerome, Adv. Jovinianum, I, 16:
"Ac de Adam quidem et Eva illud dicendum, quod ante offensam in
paradiso virgines fuerint; post peccatum autem, et extra paradisum,
protinus nuptiae."
Petrus Comestor is equally definite in the Historia Scholas-
tica, Liber Genesis, cap. xxv:
"Adam cognovit uxorem suam (Gen. iv), sed non in paradiso, sed jam
reus et ejectus."
The birth of Cain was, therefore, especially associated with

the idea of transgression, and this idea was no doubt empha-
sized by the new doctrine of celibacy.
That the period of transgression was one of considerable
length and filled with much sorrow and many incidents is
based upon the apochryphal Vita Adae et Evae.2 On this
the Middle English Life of Adam and Eve, or Canticum
Creatione,directly depends. The subject is similarly treated
in the Ethiopic Book of Adam and Eve. See the translation,
edited by Malin, 1882.
'Appendix to vol. iiI of Augustine, Migne, 35, 2282.

2
Edited by Meyer, 1879.
II. THE SACRIFICE.
Legendary allusions to the sacrifice of Cain and Abel are

common. These relate to the kind of offering made by
Cain, the connection with tithing of later Jewish law, and
the manner in which the sacrifice was received. As to the
first, the Scripture statement that Cain offered "the fruit of
the ground" seemed tame to imaginative minds and was
variously extended. In the Chester play of the Creation
Cain offers poor corn. He says of it.
Such as the fruite is fallen froe
Is good enough for him.
This come standing, as mot I thee,
Was eaten with beastes as men may se;
God, thou gets non better of me,
Be thou never so grim.
Hit were pittye, by my penne,
This eared come for to bren,
Therefore the divill hang me than
And thou of this get ought.
This earles come grew nye the waye,
Of this offer I will todaye;
For cleane come, by my faye,
Of me getts thou noughte.
Loe, God, here may thou see
Such come as grew to me;
Part of it I bring to thee
Anon withoutten let.
I hope thou wilt quite me this,
And send me more of worldlie blisse,
Els, forsoth, thou doest amisse,
And thou be in my debte.1
1 The Chester
Plays ed. by Diemling, EETS. (extra ser.), 62; The Creation,
11. 531f. To this passage Ungemach, Die Quellen der fiinf ersten Chester
Plays, gives a parallel from the Old French Le Mistere du Viel Testement.
The similarity is only general in the main and can be shown to be common
In the Towneley play of the Killing of Abel Cain says of

his crop,
When all mens corn was fayre in feld,
Then was myne not worth a neld;
When I shuld saw and wanted seyde,
And of corn had full grete neyde,
Then gaf he me none of his,-
No more will I gif hym of this.1
Later he adds,
At yere tyme I sew fayre corn,
Yit was it sich when it was shorne,
Thystyls and brerys, yei grete plente,
And all kyn wedis that myght be.2
In the Cornish mystery of the Beginning of the World

Cain objects to burning the good corn, though without
indicating what he did offer:
By my faith a great folly
It is to go to burn a thing
Which a man can live upon.3
The Middle High German Genesis is more explicit as to

the badness of the offering. It says,
Cain was ein achirman; ein garbe er nam,
Die wolde er opheren do mit agenen und in dem stro.4
The character of Cain's offering is also implied in the Life

of Adam and Eve. The Trinity MS.version says,
For he tykede of the worste Jynge
And Abel of his beste,
to a large number of sources in other places. For our purpose the main
point is that Cain offers " une gerbe meschante, Et une blee non valante,"
Des SacrificesCayn et Abel, Societd des Anciens Texts Francais, p. 95.
1 The
TowneleyPlays, ed. by England, EETS. (ex. ser. ), 71; The Killing
of Abel, 11. 122 f.
2Ibid., 11. 200 f.
8 Ancient CornishDrama, ed. by Norris, 1. 473 of translation.
4 Edition of
Diemer, p. 24.
and in the prose of the Vernon MS.,

For he [Cain] wi]heold alway Pe beste dole and 3af God of Pe worste.1
The reference to " thystlys and brerys" in the Townely

play is close to another form of the legend, in which Cain
offered thorns. It occurs in the Cornish mystery of the
Creation, formerly attributed to William Jordan. There
Cain says to Abel,
Burn it I will not,
The corn nor the fruits certainly.
Be silent, Abel, to me, dolt head.
I will gather brambles and thorns,
And dry cowdung to burn without regret,
And will make a great bush of smoke.2
It is not improbable that this reference in the Cornish play

to Cain's offering thorns is connected with such a legend in
other parts of England. In other European countries at
least it became a part of the moon story, the man in the
moon being Cain and his thorns. This latter extension of
the story deserves a moment of consideration. It is twice
used by Dante in his Divine Comedy,as may be sufficiently
clear for our purpose from a translation. The Inferno, xx,
124 f., in Longfellow's version, reads as follows:
But come now, for already holds the confines
Of both the hemispheres, and under Seville
Touches the ocean wave, Cain and his thorns,
And yesternight the moon was round already.3
To this may be added the lines in Paradiso, ii, 51 f.,
1 Horstmann,
AltenglischeLegenden, p. 130, 11. 482 f; p. 224.
2 The
Creation, ed. by Stokes. Transactions of the Philological Society
(1864), iv, p. 87.
8 See also a note in Longfellow's edition, mentioning the Italian tradition
of Cain though without accounting for it, and suggesting the relation of
this passage to two in Shakespeare's MidsummerNight's Dream. The latter
will be discussed later.
But tell me what the dusky spots may be

Upon this body, which below on earth
Make people tell that fabulous tale of Cain?
The difficulty in connecting this moon legend of Cain

with other passages in English writers is that there is
another early legend of the man in the moon which
differently accounts for the thorns. When, therefore, there
is no explicit mention of Cain we can not be sure that this
other tale may not have been in mind. According to this
second story the man in the moon is one who stole a bundle
of thorns and was banished to the moon forever. 1
Such a legend appears first on English soil, so far as I
can learn, in Alexander Neckham's De Naturis Rerum, I,
xv ;
Nonne novisti quid vulgus vocet rusticum in luna portantem spinas?
Unde quidam vulgariter loquens, ait:
Rusticus in luna, quem sarcina deprimit una,
Monstrat per spinas nulli prodesse rapinas.
Quotiens igitur umbram illam dispersam conspicis, revoca ad memoriam
transgressionem primorum parentum, et ingemisce.2
The earliest allusion in an English work is in a song first

printed by Ritson in Ancient Songs (1790), and later by
Wright in Specimens of Lyric Poetry (Percy Society), p. 110.
The five stanzas are all interesting and add something to the
tale, but the first is all that is necessary for our purpose:
Mon in be mone stond ant strit,
On his 3 bot-forke his3 burken he berepk;
Hit is muche wonder pat he na doun slyt,
1
Compare with this the similar legend noted by Grimm in DeutscheMytholo-
gie, chap. xxii (Mondsflecken), though there connected with that unfortunate
trespasser of Numbers 15, 32-36, who was stoned for gathering sticks on the
Sabbath. I have found nothing in English which directly connects the
moon-man with the trespasser in Numbers or with the Sabbath.
2
Wright's edition in the Rolls Series, 34, p. 54.
Ms. is.
For doute leste he valle he shoddreb and shere>.

When be forst freseb muche chele he byd;
pe bornes beb kene, his 1 hattren totereb.
Nis no wiht in be world bat wot wen he syt,
Ne, bote hit bue be hegge, whet wedes he wereb.2
Next in order of time, as bearing upon the legend, is an

early seal. This shows the crescent moon surrounding a
man bearing, on a stick over his shoulder, a bundle of
thorns; he is accompanied by a dog. The inscription about
the whole reads, Te Waltere docebo cur spinas phebo gero.
This seal is upon a deed in the Public Record Office,
belonging to the ninth year of Edward III.3 In the same
century is the allusion of Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide,
I, 1023:
Quod Pandarus, 'Thou hast a ful gret care,
Lest that the cherl may falle out of the mon.'
The fifteenth century furnishes at least two allusions to

the moon legend of the stolen thorns. The first is in
Pecock's Repressor, II, ch. rv. Under "untrewe opinioun
of men" he notes,
"As is this opinioun that a man which stale sumtyme a birthan of
thornis was sett into the moone, there for to abide forevere." 5
The second is in Henryson's Testamentof Creseid, in which

the moon is thus described:
'Ms. is.
2
B6ddeker, reprinting this in hisAltenglischeDichtungen, also refers for the
explanation to the German legend given by Grimm, but adds no proof of
any sort.
3 See Moon
Lore, by Rev. Timothy Hurley (1885), p. 28. For this seal
Hurley refers to an article by Hudson Taylor in the Archeological Journal,
a reference which I have not followed out. Hurley also gives one or two
references to this moon legend not found in other places.
4Upon this Skeat notes the poem in Ritson above, the passage in
Neckham, and those in Shakespeare.
5 Babington's edition, Rolls Series, p. 155.
Her gyte was gray and full of spottes blake,

And on her brest a chorle paynted full even,
Bearing a busshe of thornes on his bake,
Which for his theft might clyme no ner he heven.1
Upon these various references follow chronologically those

from Shakespeare. The two in MidsummerNight's Dream
supplement each other:
Quince. Ay, or else one must come in with a bush of thorns and a
lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person of Moon-
shine. (ii, i, 60.)
Moon. All that I have to say is to tell you that the lanthorn is the
moon; I, the man in the moon; this thornbush, my thornbush; and this
dog, my dog.
Dem. Why, all these should be in the lanthorn, for all these are in the
moon. (v, i, 361.)
To these must be added that in Tempest,II, ii, 141:

Ste. ... I was the man i' the moon when time was.
Cal. I have seen thee in her and I do adore thee; my mistress show'd
me thee, and thy dog and thy bush.
There is besides a brief allusion in Dekker's Landthorne and

Candlelight (ch. viii), which belongs in the same period:
"And as in the moon there is a man that never stirres without a bush
of thornes at his backe, so these Moone-men lie under bushes and are
indeed no better than hedge creepers." 2
Ben Jonson agrees with Shakespeare in mentioning both

the dog and the thorns. His passage is in News from the
New World discoveredin the Moon. One of the servants of
Poetry has just returned from the moon, when the following
conversation takes place:
L1. 260-264, as given in the reprint of Thynne's Chaucer.

Grosart's Dekker, III, 258. Other allusions to the man in the moon are
to be found in Hudibras, II, iii, 767 f., as noted by Hurley above, and in
Wilkins's Discovery of a New World, 4th ed., 1684, pp. 77, 94. While
Wilkins mentions various suggestions as to the moon's spots they do not
bear directly upon our matter.
"Fact. Where ? Which is he ? I must see his dog at his girdle, and the
bush of thorns at his back ere I believe it.
1 Herald. Do not trouble your faith then; for, if the bush of thorns
should prove a goodly grove of oaks, in what case were you and your
expectation ?
2 Herald. These are stale ensigns of the stage's man in the moon,
delivered down to you by musty antiquity, and are of as doubtful credit as
the makers."
It will be seen that none of these passages makes mention

of Cain and, except for two points, may be accounted for by
the other legend of the stolen thorns. These two points
are first, the dog of the fourteenth century seal and the
passages from Shakespeare and Jonson; and second, the
shuddering or trembling of the moon-man in Ritson's song
and in Chaucer. The dog may easily be connected with the
Cain legend for, according to one tradition, a dog was given
him to lead him in his wanderings; see foot-note to p. 869 and
p. 873. The shuddering or trembling may also be explained
as the mark of Cain, according to those who follow a Septua-
gint reading; see p. 872. These two points, therefore, are
strongly in favor of assuming a connection of the moon man
with Cain.
There is also one other passage in Shakespeare which, if
it could be connected with those above, would show that he
had in mind the same legend as that known in Italy. In
Richard II, v, vi, 43, Bolingbroke banishes from his pres-
ence the murderer of the king with these words, among
others:
With Cain go wander thorough shades of night,
And never show thy head by day nor light.
If now "wander thorough shades of night" be assumed to

apply to Cain in the moon, we may reasonably infer that the
other references in Shakespeare to the moon and the thorns
are also connected with the Cain legend. Such explanation
of the passage in Richard II is not unlikely, though there is
a possibility of another, as we shall show later; see p. 871.

Even if this is not connected with the moon story, there still
remain the two particulars mentioned above that may be
best explained in connection with Cain.
To sum up the evidence, the thorns accompanying the
moon figure may be associated with Cain or with a thief of
a bundle of thorns, possibly with the Sabbath breaker of
Numbers 15, 32-36, as that story was told in the middle
ages. The dog and the trembling may be best explained in
reference to the Cain legend. If we add to these Shake-
speare's "With Cain go wander thorough shades of night"
as a part of the moon legend, the preponderanceof evidence
would seem to connect the Elizabethan allusions with the
Cain story. Otherwise we must at least assume confusion
of the two stories, that of Cain and that of the thief, or
possibly the Sabbath breaker.'
To return to the Cain legend proper, other allusions to
the sacrifice of Cain are connected with the nature of the
transgression committed. The Scripture story certainly
does not make clear why Cain, " a tiller of the ground," was
in error in bringing to sacrifice "of the fruit of the ground."
Just as I write this revision there comes to hand the London Athenceum
of June 23, 1906, with a letter of Paget Toynbee on Cain as a Synonym of
the Moon. He quotes certain lines from The Strange Fortune of Alerane, or
My Ladies Toy (London, 1605), in which "Cain appears to be used as a
synonym of the moon." They read as follows:
But see how Cupid like a cruel Caine
Doth change faire daies and makes it frowning weather:
These Princes joyes, he overcast with paine,
For 'twas not likely they should match together.
These lines must be regarded, I think, as clinching the argument above in

favor of a connection of the moon legend with that of Cain in Elizabethan
literature. For completeness of bibliography on this point perhaps I may
add reference to my own letter in the Athenceumof August 18. This
brought no further discussion of the subject.
Various explanations were given as to why the Lord " had

not respect" unto Cain's offering. Sometimes the manner
of presenting the gift was regarded as the real offence.
Thus the Cursor Mundi sums it up in the following couplet:
For Caym gaf him with ivel will;
Ur Loverd loked noght kartill.1
More commonly Cain's offering was connected with the

later law of tithing, and Cain was assumed to have been
punished for tithing falsely. In the Life of Adam and Eve
(Trin. MS.)the false tithing is explicitly mentioned:
Bote such 3ut was here hap
pat Kaym for his false tidynge,-
For he typede of he worste kynge,
And Abel of his beste.2
The last two lines have been already quoted above. Later
the same version also adds of Cain,
And whanne he deyde he 3ede to helle,
Evermore her to dwelle
For his false ty1ynge.3
The prose version is equally explicit:

Abel was tiper good of alle tinges and Jonked God swipe wel; and Caym
tiped falslich and brak Godes hestes, for he wipheold alwey ke beste dole
and 3af God of he worste.4
In the Towneley play of the Killing of Abel this idea of

false tithing, together with the evil nature of Cain in other
respects, is worked out at length. It may be briefly sum-
marized as follows: A servant of Cain opens the play with
a ranting speech in which he tells us that his master would
get the better of anyone in a quarrel. Then Cain appears
IEETS. 57, 11. 1065-6.

2Horstmann's Legenden, p. 130, 11.480 f.
3
Ibid., 11. 487 f. 4Ibid., p. 224.
plowing, complaining of his horse and wrangling with his

boy. On coming in Abel is received with no gentle lan-
guage, but still begs Cain to tithe and make burnt offering.
The latter will have none of Abel's sermonizing, and will
not leave his plow. He says that God gives him only sorrow
and woe, and he complains of his poor crop like a grumbling
farmer of to-day. Of tithing he says,
We, wherof shuld I tend, leif brothere,
For I am ich yere Warsthen othere.1
Finally Cain gives way to Abel's importunity and begins to

tithe, still grumbling and choosing the best for himself:
Yei, this also shall leif with me,
For I will chose and best have;
This hold I thrift of all this thrafe.
At yere tyme I saw fayre corn,

Yit was it sich when it was shorne,
Thystyls and brerys, yei grete plente,
And all kyn wedis that myght be.2
As he tithes he repeats the count to himself, and Pollard, in

his side-notes to the play, conjectures that he doubles the
count for his own advantage. When he reaches "ten" he
puts aside a sheaf with the remark,
We, this may we best mys (1. 219),
as if it were the worst of the lot. Abel reproves him and

says he is tithing wrongly and of the worst.
In the York play, Sacrificium Cayme and Abell, Cain
protests against tithing in a similar manner, but the further
development of the story has been lost to us. At this point
two pages have been cut out of the MS.
The manner in which the sacrifices were received by the
The Killing of Abel, 11. 108-9. Cf. lines already quoted on p. 839.
2Ibid.,11. 195 f.
Lord was also made the subject of legendary extension. A

common addition first appears in the prose Life of Adam and
Eve, where we are told:
Christ underfong wel fayre Pe tiFe of Abel, for Pe smoke wente evene
upward as hit brende; and be smoke of Caym wente dounwart, for he
ti]ede falsliche.1
In the Towneley play the situation is made more dramatic

by Cain's sacrifice refusing to burn, and smoking until it
almost chokes him. He exclaims,
We! out, haro, help to blaw!
It will not bren for me, I traw;
Puf ! this smoke dos me mych shame-
Now bren, in the dwilys name.
A ! what dwill of hell is it?
Almost had myne breth beyn dit.
Had I blawen oone blast more,
I had beyn choked right thore.9
Another turn is given to the scene in the Chester play.

There a flame from heaven comes down to the sacrifice of
Abel, as in the later story of Elijah. When Cain sees it he
says,
Out, out, how have I spend my good t
To se this sight I wax nere wodd;
A flame of fire from heaven stode
On my brothers offringe.
His sacrifice, I se, God takes,
And myne refuseth and forsakes;
My semblant for shame shakes,
For envie of this thinge.3
The story of the flame from heaven was generally adopted

by later English commentators, so that it is not strange to
find Milton writing of Abel,
His offering soon propitious fire from heaven
Consumed with nimble grace and grateful steam.4
1
Horstmann, Legenden, p. 224. 2 The
Killing of Abel, 11. 275 f.
3The Chester play of The Creation, 1. 569.
Paradise Lost, xI, 441-2.
SOURCES.
The characterization of Cain's offering as merely poorer

corn is perhaps based upon Hebrew tradition, perhaps fol-
lows naturally from early Christian commentary. Ginzberg
shows that Hebrew commentators made Cain offer only that
part of his food which was left after eating, rather than
newly gathered fruits.' On the other hand the early Fathers
emphasized that the offering was "of the fruit of the
ground," not the "first fruit." Ambrose (De Cain et Abel,
Lib. II, cap. x) says:
"LObtulit, inquit, exfructibus terrae, non a primis fructibus primitias Deo.
Hoc est primitias sibi prius vindicare; Deo autem sequentia deferre." 2
The extensions of this idea in later Christian writings

may be gathered from the following quotations. Alcuin's
Interrogationes in Genesim has,
" Ut quid Abel sacrificium susceptum est et Cain refutatum ? (Gen. iv,
4.) Abel Deo optima et naturalia offerebat, Cain vero viliora et humana
inventione excogitata, ut putatur." S
Petrus Comestor explains that Cain's offering was not a

proper one, "quia meliora sibi retinuit, spicas vero attritas
et corrosas secus viam Domino obtulit."4 Compare also
John a Lapide, Commentariumin Genesim, cap. iv:
" Ut offeret,etc. Secundos scilicet et viliores fructus; hi enim vocantur
in Scriptura fructus terrae. Primos ergo et meliores fructus sibi reservabit
Cain."
Any more direct statement that Cain offered thorns in

sacrifice I do not find. It is, however, not an unnatural
extension of the idea in the passage just quoted. After the
curse of the ground in Adam's case, the "fruit of the
l Die Haggada, p. 61 f. 2Migne, 14, 355.

Migne, 100, 518.
4
Hist. Schol., Liber Genesis, cap. xxvi, Migne, 198, 1077.
ground" might easily be assumed to be the "thorns and

thistles" which the Lord had said it should bring forth.
As to Cain's manner of offering his sacrifice the sources
are various. The apochryphal Book of Adam tells of two
sacrifices of the sons of Adam, and of the first says:
" But as to Cain he took no pleasure in offering; but, after much anger
on his father's part, he offered up his gift once, and when he did offer up,
his eye was on the offering he made." 1
The last clause is explained as meaning that Cain offered

grudgingly. In the offering preceding the quarrel Cain
"behaved haughtily toward his brother and thrust him from
the altar." 2 Compare also Augustine (In Epistolam
Joannis ad Parthos, Tractatus v, cap. iii) in reference to the
sacrifices of Cain and Abel:
"Et quem vidit cum charitate offerre, ipsius sacrificium respexit; quem
vidit cum invidia offerre, ab ipsius sacrificio oculos avertit."
The special application to tithing is natural from such

interpretation of Cain's offering as that of Ambrose (De
Cain et Abel) cited above. Otherwise it may depend on a
Septuagint reading not found in our modern version. The
Latin translation of this (Septuagint Genesis 4, 7) is, "Si
recte offeras non autem recte dividas, peccasti, quiesce."
This was frequently commented upon by various Fathers in
such a way as to suggest tithing, though I do not find that
specifically mentioned. On the other hand, the explanation
of these words as connected with a Hebrew tradition about
dividing the world does not seem likely from the use made
of them by the Fathers.3
Our extracts above give two ways in which the Lord
showed his approval and disapproval of the sacrifices. For
1 Translationof Malin, Book I, ch. 77. 2Ibid., Book I, ch. 78.

3 This Ginzberg mentions in Die Haggada, etc., p. 69, but I think without
clear evidence in its favor.
the first, the difference in the way the smoke of the two
offerings ascended, I find no source in early Christian
writings. The second means of expressing approbation of
Abel's offering, the flame from heaven, appears in the Book
of Adam. In Book I, ch. 78, we read:
" And Abel prayed unto God to accept his offering. Then a divine fire
came down and consumed his offering." 1
This is Hebrew tradition, as shown by Ginzberg, Die

Haggada, etc., p. 82. It was also commonly adopted by the
Church Fathers, appearing first in Theodotion and Cyril of
Alexandria, later in many others. Jerome has it in his
Liber Quaestionumin Genesim, cap. Iv, vs. 4:
" Unde scire poterat Cain, quod fratris munera suscipisset Deus et sua
repudiasset; nisi illa interpretatio vera est, quam Theodotion posuit: 'Et
inflammavit Dominum super Abel, et super sacrificium ejus; super Cain
vero, et super sacrificium ejus non inflammavit.'"
So also Alcuin in Interrogationes in Genesim:
" Unde noverat Cain Dominum ad munera ejus non respexisse, et ad
munera Abel respexisse ? Igne misso de coelis, ut creditur, hostiam Abel
suscepit, ut saepissimc factum offerentibus viris sanctis legimus; Cain vero
ipse sacrificium suum consumere igne debebat." 2
III. THE MURDER OF ABEL.
Several additions to the biblical story of the murder of

Abel also occur in various places. In Genesis the quarrel
arose out of the displeasure of Cain because his offering was
not accepted. Hebrew tradition adds jealousy of Abel's
handsomer wife as a reason, though to this I find no refer-
ence in English. An addition to the story occurs, however,
in the Life of Adam and Eve, when Eve is made to tell
Adam of a dream foreboding evil.
1See
Malin, p. 98.
Migne, 100, 525. Cf. John a Lapide, Corn.in Genesim, cap. iv.
2
7
To Adam banne bus seyde Eve:

'Sire,' she seyde, '3e mowe me leve,
Slepynge Y say a sy3t.
Me bo3te Kaym tok Abellis blod,
And sop it op as he were wod.'
panne seide Adam ful ry3t:
'I drede me he shel him sle;
perfore sondred shel be3 be
For drede of afterclap.' '
It was then, according to this account, that

pe3 maden Kaym a tylman,
And Abel a schepherde ban (11. 478-9),
in order to separate them in occupation and prevent diffi-

culty. The prose version gives the account in this way:
Eve seide to Adam: 'Ich am sore agast jat Caym wol sle Abel, his
broper; herfore hit bihoveb, 3if we wol wel do, to parte hem atwynne.'
po was Caym maad tilyere, and Abel heerde of scheep and of opur bestes.2
One variation of the biblical narrative, based on the

Septuagint version as we shall see, makes Cain ask Abel to
go into the field with him, the implication being that he
wishes to draw him away to a secret place for the murder.
This appears first in IElfric's Translation of the Old Testa-
mentt:
pa cwse' Cain to Abel his bre;er, 'Uton gan ut.' pa hi ut agane
weron, etc.3
It is also found in the Wyclifite translation of Middle

English:
And Caym seide to Abel his brother, 'Go we out,' etc.
In the Ormulum these lines are based upon such a reading:

Annd Caym toe burrh hete annd nib Abael hiss a3henn broberr,
Annd ledde himm ut uppo ke feld annd sloh himm outenn gillte.4
H1orstmann,Legenden, p. 130, 11. 469 f. 2 Ibid., p. 224.

3Bibliothekder
AngelsiichsischenProsa, Genesis, 4, 8.
Holt's ed., 11. 14466 f.
In the prose Life of Adam and Eve Cain says,

'Go we now to pe feelde forto witen ur fader bestes.' 1
This idea explains also a passage in Wiclif's treatise, The

Clergy may not hold Property, chapter iv, in which he says,
quoting Bishop Odo.2
Syche ben acursid, as Cayme was, hat led owte he schepe Abel and
brynge hym not a3en, but disseyvyd hym.
In the Towneley play Cain's words are,
Cor furth, Abell, and let us weynd;
Me thynk that God is not my freynd,
On land then will I flyt.3
In the Chester play Cain says, after the reproof for his anger,
Ah well, well, then it is soe,
Come forth, brother, with me to goe
Into the feild a lyttle here froe,
I have an arend to saye.4
The instrument which Cain used in murdering his brother

is not mentioned in the Bible. To the literal medieval mind
this was an unfortunate omission, and it was early supplied
by the commentators. In English the earliest reference so
far found occurs in the parallels to the Salomon and Saturn
dialogue cited in the edition of the }Elfric Society. The
passage reads,
Saga me forhwam stanas ne sint berende.
Ic Se secge, for&amSe Abeles blod gefeol ofer stan, Sa hine Chain his
bro~or ofsloh mid anes esoles cinbane.5
1Horstmann, Legenden, p. 224.

2 See Matthew's Worksof WiclifHitherto Unprinted,Early Eng. Text Soc.,
74, p. 374.
s The Killing of Abel, 11. 301 f. 4 The Creation, 11. 593 f.
5Salomon and Saturn, AElfric Society, p. 186. This was quoted by
Professor Skeat in Notes and Queries,6th ser., II, 143 (1880), later reprinted
in A Student's Pastime, p. 137, to explain 'Cain's jaw-bone' in Hamlet, v,
i, 85. He also notes the lines from Cursor Mundi, quoted below, but
mentions no further allusions in English and does not explain the origin of
the tradition.
Tell me why stones do not bear fruit. I tell you because the blood
of Abel, when Cainhis brotherkilled him with an ass's jawbone,fell on
a stone.
The next allusion in English seems to be that of tlle Cursor
Mundi (11. 1073-4), where we read of Abel,
With Pe chafteban of a ded as,'
Men sais hat harwithslan he was.
The legend is also distinctly stated in the prose Life of Adam
and Eve:
And her Caymslouh Abel; wi ]hecheke bon of an assehe smothim on
he hed, and herhe belafteded in he feld of Damasse.2
Such a legend doubtless explains the allusion to the 'cheke
bon' in the Towneley play. Cain is speaking:
We, yei, that shal thou sore abite;
With cheke bon, or that I blyn,
Shal I the and thi life twyn;
So lig downther and take thi rest,
Thus shall shrewesbe chastysedbest (11.323-27).
The same idea occurs in the Cornish Mystery of The Crea-
tion. Cain says to Abel,
For strivingagainstme
I will strike thee, rogue, rascal,
That thou fall on top of thy back.
Take that.
Thou foul knave,
On the jowl with boneof the jowl.3
The connecting link between the Middle English passages

already given and that of Shakespeare is found in the Master
of Oxford's Catechism of the fifteenth century. The paral-
lelism to the dialogue illustrating Salomon and Saturn will
be seen at once.
1 MS. has. 2Horstmann,Legenden,p. 224.

3Phil. Soc. Trans., 11. 1112 f.
Why bereth not stonys froyt as trees ?

For Cayme slough his brother Abell with the bone of an asse cheke.'
Finally this explains, as Professor Skeat has shown, the

allusion in Hamlet, v, i, 85 to "Cain's jaw-bone that did
the first murder."
It is scarcely to be expected that this story of the jaw-bone
should be generally received by serious commentators. They
usually follow the Hebrew traditions that the instrument was
a stone or a club. Thus Milton says of Cain,
Whereat he inly raged and, as they talked,
Smote him into the midriff with a stone
That beat out life.2
Byron, on the other hand, makes Cain strike Abel "with a

brand . . . which he snatches from the altar." 3
The details regarding the exposure of the crime are all
additions to the brief Scripture story. According to the
Cursor Mundi (11. 1087 e), when Adam looked upon Cain
a sigh escaped the latter, and this made Adam suspicious.
He also saw that Cain was angry and questioned him about
his brother. It is of him, in this poem, that Cain asks
(11. 1096 f.),
Quen was I keper of hi child ?
Of him can I sai certain nan
Bot he to brin his tend bigan.
Then Adam goes to the field and finds the body. Adam
and Eve are not inclined to blame Cain, and the dead body
would have been hidden, but for the Lord, who calls to Cain
as in the Scripture. In the Towneley play Cain is frightened
by the deed and would creep into some hole, where he would
remain forty days, when he is called by God above.
With additions to the story of the murder must be classed
1 Salomon and
Saturn, AElfric Society, p. 219.
3 Paradise Lost, XI, 444-6.
3
Cain, A Mystery, Act III.
one concerning the body of Abel, which when buried refused

to remain hidden. Of it we are told in the Cursor Mundi
(11. 1078 f.):
pe bodi moght he nangate hide;
For under erth most it not rest,
pe clai ai up hat bodi kest.
His broPer1 ded sua wend he dil,
Bot he moght nouquar 2 it hil.
Forhi men sais hat to his tide
Is na man hat murth mai hide.
This part of the subject may be closed by reference to the

legendary locality of Abel's death in the region of Damascus.
Allusion to it has already been noted in the Life of Adam.
and Eve, p. 854. It is also found in Trevisa's translation of
Higden's Polychronicon:
Damascus is to menynge schedynge blood, for here Caym slowh Abel and
hyd hym in he sonde.3
It is followed in Mandeville's Travels (chap. xi), where it
is said,
And in that place where Damase was founded, Kaym sloughe Abel his
brother.
Finally we have Shakespeare's allusion in I Henry VI, I,

iii, 39. There,
This be Damascus, be thou cursed Cain 4
To slay thy brother Abel if thou wilt,
IMs. broiler. 2MS. nourquar.

'Higden's Polychronicon, I, xv. Rolls Ser. 41, 103.
4This legend rests upon that which represented Adam as created outside
of Eden in the region of the later Damascus, and afterward placed in the
garden. Some references are given in Mitzner's AltenglischeSprachproben,
(Prosa), 184, as Skeat noted in the article referred to above. That from the
Middle English Genesis and Exodus (1. 207) is as explicit as any:
In feld Damaske Adam was mad,
And Se'en fer on londe sad;
is spoken by the Bishop of Winchester to the Duke of

Gloucester.
We may perhaps add Wyntoun's reference to the creation
of Adam, in his Original Chronicleof Scotland, I, 65:
That in pe feild of Damask faire,
Of nature and of nobill aire,
Or ellis in Je vale of Ebron,
As sum men haldis opinioun.
Well known is the allusion in Chaucer's Monk's Tale (B.

3197), to which Skeat adds these two lines from Lydgate's
Fall of Princes:
Of slyme of the erthe, in Damascene the fielde,
God made theym above eche creature.
SOURCES.
The first legendary addition under this head, the dream

of Eve, is from the Vita Adae et Evae :
"Et dixit Eva ad Adam: 'Domine mi, dormiens vidi visum quasi
sanguinem filii nostri Abel in manu Cain ore suo deglutientis eum, prop-
terea dolorem habeo.' Et dixit Adam: 'Vae, ne forte, interficiat Cain
Abel Sed separemus eos ab invicem et faciamus eis singulas mansiones.'
Et fecerunt Cain agricolam, Abel fecerunt pastorem, ut ita fuissent alb
invicem separati." 1
That variation in the biblical narrative by which Cain

invites Abel to go with him to the field is based on the
Septuagint version:
Kal eire Kcitv rpbs 'ApeX rbv daeXf>6 arov,
A^eOo).vt els rb reSlov.
This reads in the Latin translation (Genesis, 4, 8) "Eamus
God bar him into Paradis,

An erd al ful of swete blis.
1 Meyer, p. 44. Cf. also the Revelation of Moses, Ante-Nicene Fathers,
vni, 565.
in campum," or in the Vulgate, which preserves the Septua-

gint text in this place, "Dixitque Cain ad Abel fratrem
suum: Egrediamur foras."
The idea is much extended in the Book of Adam. Thus,
after Cain had praised the beauty of the day, he said:
"To-day, 0 my brother, I very much wish thou wouldest come with me
into the field to enjoy thyself and to bless our fields and our flocks, for thou
art righteous and I love thee much, 0 my brother." 1
The Septuagint reading is frequently mentioned and com-

mented upon by the Fathers. It is sufficient to note Ambrose
(De Cain et Abel, Liber II, cap. viii), the heading of which
reads:
"Cain admonitione spreta insolentiam et crimen auget. Ejusdem
verbis: Eamus in campum, significari ostenditur pravis actionibus deserta
loca et sterilia convenire."
Bede, in his Hexaemeron (Liber II), has: "Eduxit Cain

fratrem suum foras, et occidit, etc." 2
Legends regarding the instrument used by Cain in the
murder are two. That which mentions a stone is Hebrew
tradition, as shown by Ginzberg. He translates a Hebrew
passage as follows:
"Die Gelehrten sagen: Er [Cain] hat ihn mit einem Steine getodtet." 3
Such an explanation of the murder is found in the Book of

Adam. It should be said that Cain first takes a staff with
him, saying to Abel, "Wait for me until I fetch a staff,
because of wild beasts." Later Cain C" smote him with the
staff, blow upon blow, until he was stunned." Abel
meanwhile says,
1 Book
I, ch. 78, Malin, p. 99.
2
Migne, 91, 70.
3 Die
Haggada, etc., p. 64.
"If thou wilt kill me, take one of these large stones and kill me
outright." Then Cain, the hard-hearted and cruel murderer, took a large
stone and smote his brother upon.the head until his brains oozed out and
he weltered in his blood." l
The fathers are for some reason strangely silent as to the

instrument of the murder, but later commentators generally
made it a stone or a club. I need not quote, but many will
be reminded of the pictures in the old family Bible.
For the legend that made the instrument used by Cain the
jawbone of an ass, I find nothing beyond the references in
English itself.2 Dr. Ginzberg informs me that it is not
Rabbinical in origin. I can suggest only that it may easily
have come from some confusion with the story of Samson
(Judges, 15, 16), but otherwise know of no explanation at
present.3
Of the extra-biblical incidents connected with the exposure
of the crime, I find a source only for that in which the
ground refuses to hide Abel's body, as in Cursor Mundi.
This story,appears in the Book of Adam, I, ch. 79:
" Then Cain began at once to dig the earth [wherein to lay] his brother.
. . . He then cast his brother into the pit and covered him with dust.
But the earth would not receive him, but it threw him up at once. Again
did Cain dig the earth and hid his brother in it; but again did the earth
throw him up on itself, until three times did the earth throw up on itself
the body of Abel."
' Book
of Adam, I, 79.
2
When reading part of this paper before the Philological Club of
Western Reserve University, Prof. Borgerhoff informed me that, as a boy,
he was taught this legend in a Belgian Sunday School.
3 This use of one
passage of Scripture to explain another, even though
not really connected, is characteristic of early commentaries. Thus the
"thorns and thistles" of Cain's sacrifice are probably connected with
the curse of the ground in the case of Adam; see p. 849. The flame from
heaven upon Abel's altar is like that which came upon Elijah's. The ass's
jawbone is an interpretation from the story of Samson. Finally the inter-
pretation of the curse of the ground in Cain's case is based on that in the
condemnation of Adam; see pp. 864, 871.
The placing of Abel's death near Damascus is Hebrew

tradition, early adopted by the Fathers. Ginzberg mentions
it in Die Haggada, etc., p. 63, and refers to Jerome's use of
it in his Commentariumin Ezechiel, cap. 27, 18. Jerome's
words explain the origin of the tradition as based on
etymology:
"Damascus interpretatur sanguinem bibens, et Hebraeorum vera traditio
est, campum, in quo interfectus est Abel a parricida Cain, fuisse in
Damasco." 1
Many other passages might be cited to show that this

tradition was commonly accepted. For its greater exactness
in certain details that from John a Lapide (Commentarium
in Genesim)may be added:
" De terra. ?Tradunt multi Abel caesum esse in Damasco, et inde dictam
Damascum quasi [Hebr.] dam sac, id est sanguinis saccus, qui scilicet bibit
et hausit sanguinem Abelis. Intellige Damascum, non Syriae, ut videtur
velle S. Hieronymus; haec enim aliunde suum mortem et originem traxit,
ut dicam, cap. xv, vers. 1, sed Damascenum Agrum juxta Hebron, rubra
terra confertum (quae hebraice hic vocatur Adama), ubi creatus et vixisse
putatur Adam. Ita Burchardius, Adrichomius et alii in Descriptione
terrae sanctae, et Abulensis in cap. xiii, Quaes. cxxxviii."
IV. THE CURSE AND THE MARK OF CAIN.
The curse of Cain and the mark set upon him were
variously interpreted in medieval times. Especially, the
curse was amplified and made more definite by legendary
additions. In the Scripture the malediction has three ele-
ments. Cain is cursed "from the ground which has opened
her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand."
He is told that the ground " shall not henceforth yield unto
thee her strength," and he is to be "a fugitive and a
wanderer .... in the earth."
'Migne, 25, 315-16.

The curse of Cain was early represented as being everlast-

ing, and Cain was therefore incapable of regaining God's
favor. In the CaedmonianGenesis he is "awyrged to widan
aldre" 'acursed forever.'1 In Cursor Mundi this part of
the curse reads,
pi derfli dede has liknes nan,
Of all dedes it es uttan.
Openlik I tell he here,
pou sal it be ful selcuth dere;
For ]of I wald forgive it Pe,
It is noght wor]i forgiven be.2
The mystery plays emphasize the same interpretation.

Towneley,with its usual freedom, does not hesitate to omit
much of the curse, and the sign wholly, but introduces Cain
and his boy burying the body of Abel. The boy proposes
to forsake his master, yet turns the whole scene into comedy
by his acts and words. This part is not to our purpose,
except at the last. Then Cain bids farewell to the spectators
in words which indicate that he understands the severity
of his doom:
Now fayre well, fellows all,
For I must nedis weynd,
And to the dwill be thrall
Warld withoutten end;
Ordand ther is my stall
With Sathanas the feynd.s
In the Chester play the curse of the Lord is,
Cayne cursed on earth thou shalt be aye

For this dede thou hast done todaye;
And while thou on the earth may goe,

Of vengeance have thy dole.4
Cain himself says of the punishment,
1L. 1015. 2L1. 1143f.

s TheKillingof Abel,1. 462 f. 4 TheCreation,11.625-6, 663-4.
For my synne so horrible is,

And I have done so much amisse,
That unworthy I am, iwis,
Forgevenes to attayne.1
And again,
Out, out, alas, alas,
I am damned without grace.
* . . . . . . . . .
A lurrell alway I must be,

For I am escaped thrifte.2
In the York play, Sacrificium Cayme and Abel, an angel

calls Cain to account and says (11. 86 f.):
God hais sent the his curse downe,
Fro hevyn to hell, maladictio dei;
and later,
pou shall be curssed uppon be grounde,
God has geffyn he his malisoune;
Yff Jou wolde tyll he erthe so rounde,
No frute to be per shalle be founde.
Of wikkidnesse sen oouarte sonne,
pou shalle be waferyng here and here,
pis day.
In bittir bale nowe art kou boune,
Outcastyn shall ]ou be for care,
No man shal rewe of thy misfare,
for kis affraie.
This curse Cain accepts as forever in these words (11.117 f.):

Alias ! for syte, so may I saye
My synne it passes al mercie,
For ask it he, Lord, I ne maye:
To have it am I nou3t worthy.
The interpretation of the curse as everlasting also explains

the allusion in the Parson's Tale by Chaucer:
" And that a man ne be nat despeired of the mercy of Jesu Crist, as Caym
or Judas." 3
'Ibid., 11. 6414. I. 11. 665-6, 699-700.

3 CanterburyTales, I, 1013 (Skeat ed.).
Moreover it is highly probable that this character of the

curse makes clear certain lines in Beowulf, descriptive of
Grendel as a descendent of Cain. I refer to lines 168-9:
"No he tone gifstol gretan moste
malSum for Metode, ne his myne wisse."
Not at all might he approach the throne of grace with gifts for
the Creator, nor know his love.
If these lines were written of Cain himself there could be

no question that they were a natural expression of the ever-
lasting nature of his curse. It is scarcely less probable that
they are here extended to one who is regarded in Beowulf
as a direct descendant of Cain, and fully merits the punish-
ment of the first murderer.
If there were any doubt about the naturalness of the lan-
guage to express the severity of the curse, it would be set at
rest by comparison with the curse of Cain in the fragment
of the Old Saxon Genesis. The important lines are as fol-
lows:
"Fluhtik scalt thu thoh endi freSig forwardas nu
libbean an thesum landa, so lango so thu thit liaht waros;
forhuaton sculon thi hluttra liudi, thu ni s[c]alt io furthur
cuman te thines herron sprako,
we[h]slean thar mid worton thinon."
A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou now henceforth live in this
land, so long as thou shalt endure the light. Good people shall
curse thee; thou shalt not ever again come to the assembly of thy
lord, exchange there thy words.1
It was probably owing to this interpretation of the curse

that Cain came to be called so frequently "cursed Cain," by
far the commonest of the general references. It would be
almost a waste of time to attempt gathering them all. This
interpretation also, gives point to such a jibe as that of
2
Wyclif when he calls a priory "Caymes castle."
Altsichsische Bibeldichtung, ed. by Zangemeister and Braune, p. 45.

' English WorksHitherto Unprinted, pp. 129, 211, 420.
The statement in the Bible as to the ground not yielding

her strength was also made more specific. In this respect
the CaedmonianGenesis reads:
Ne seleS he waestmaseorse
wlitige to woruldnytte, ac heo wseldreore swealh
halge of handum jinum; forPon heo he hro6ra oftih6
glaemes grene folde.
Nor shall the earth give goodly fruits for use in this world, but
she, holy, swallowed the blood of strife from thy hands; therefore
she shall withdraw from thee her comforts, the green earth her
beauty.
In the CursorMundi there is clear influence of the original
curse of the ground for Adam's sin. The passage reads:
poru Pe wark sa ful a plight
Erth Jou sal be maledight,
pat reseved ji brother blode;
With pine it sal he 3eild pi fode.
For pe [i ?] mikel felunny
pi wete sal becom 3i3anny;
Insted o pin oper sede,
Ne sal Pe growe bot thorne and wede;
For hi nedeles wickedhede
pou sal lede ever pi liif in nede.'
According to Scripture Cain was to be "a fugitive and a

vagabond" on the earth. This idea was emphasised in the
Csedmonian Genesis as follows:
pu bsescwealmes scealt
wite winnan and on wraechweorfan
awyrged to widan aldre.
pu scealt geomor hweorfan,

arleas of earde pinum, swa Pu Abele wurde
to feorhbanan; for7on pu flema scealt
widlast wrecan, winemagum laS.
Him ka Cain gewat

gongan geomormod Gode of gesyhte,
wineleas wrecca.
I Genesis, 11. 1015 f. 2 CursorMudin, 11. 1133 f.

Thou shalt for this murder win punishment, and go into exile
acursed forever. . . . Sad thou shalt depart, infamous from thy
dwelling place, since thou wast murderer of Abel; for this reason
a fugitive shalt thou tread the track of the wanderer, loathed by thy
kinsmen. . . . Then Cain departed, sad in mind, from the sight of
God, a friendless exile.l
There is another reference, as I believe, to the banishment

of Cain and the traditions regarding it in Beowulf, 104 f.,
1263 f., though one of these depends upon a slightly different
interpretation from that ordinarily given. The passages read:
Fifelcynnes eard
wonsseli[g] wer weardode hwile,
sip-an him Scyppend forscrifen hsefde;
in Caines cynne tone cwealm gewrsec
ece Drihten, lses he he Abel slog.
He ,a fag gewat,
mor,re gemearcod, mandream fleon,
westen warode.
A land of monsters the unhappy man inhabited awhile, after the
Creator had condemned him; on Cain's race the eternal Lord
avenged that murder, because he slew Abel. . . . Then he [Cain]
guilty departed, marked with murder, fleeing from the joys of men,
inhabited a desert place.
The latter passage needs no special explanation. It may

be noted, however, that early commentators emphasized the
supposed antithesis between Eden, the place of bliss, and the
land of Nod, or 'wandering' to the east of Eden. The land
of Nod was naturally the desert, the joyless land.
The former passage seems to have been invariably regarded
as referring to Grendel. I suggest that wonsceligwer may be
easily and naturally explained as anticipating Cain of Caines
cynne. Cain was the only one directly condemned by the
Creator, and the sentence may be connected with the
following even better than with the preceding context. In
Genesis, 11. 1013 f., 1018 f., 1049 f.

other words the beginning of the biblical allusion is with

Fifelcynnes eard, as it certainly should include the whole
reference to the proscription by the Creator. The difficulty
of the present punctuation has often been appreciated. Sievers,
for instance, proposed to better it by including in Caines
cynne in the preceding sentence.' This, however, requires
reading the next clause as parenthetical, an unfortunate
change at best. These difficulties disappear if we assume
that wonscaig wer refers, not to Grendel, but by anticipation
to Cain in line 107. The passage would then read, " A land
of monsters the unhappy man [Cain] inhabited awhile, after
the Creator had condemned him; on Cain's kin the eternal
Lord avenged that murder, because he slew Abel."
It can not be urged that wer is impossible for Grendel,
though it is not elsewhere used for him. He is said to be
on weres wcestum,' in the form of a man,' in 1. 1352, but this
is qualified by mara ]onne cenig man o?ier, 'greater than any
other man.' He is also called feasceaft guma in 1. 973, but
guma is at least more general than wer, the sense of the
expression being nearer 'wretched creature.' The word
which is nearest to wer is rinc of 1. 720 (cf. also 986), but
this poetic term is also applied to the fallen angels in the
Old English Genesis, 1. 268. Besides, the prevailing terms
applied to Grendel, as we shall show in another place (see
p. 880 f.), emphasize unhuman or superhuman characteristics,
so that wer is at least more appropriate for Cain than for his
monster descendant.
Only one expression might seem to be at variance with
this interpretation, the wordsfifelcynnes eard of 1. 104. Yet
these words may be regarded as a natural extension of the
idea that Cain was banished to a land full of evil. As there
could be no men in any other part of the world, and animals
Paul and Braune's Beitrdge, Ix, 135.

were already created, the place might easily be called 'a

land of monsters.' Such an extension of the Scripture story
is actually made elsewhere. In the Chester play of The
CreationCain emphasizes his banishment by the words,
For if I out of land[e] flee
From man[ne]s companye,
Beastes I wot will werry me.1
The Cornish play is even more explicit. As Lamech goes

out to hunt he says to his servant,
And my grandsire Cain yet alive,
In the desert among beasts
He is still living.2
Later, too, Cain, who was himself taken for a wild beast by
Lamech's boy, says,
I desire not to see a son of man
With my will at any period,
But company many times
With every beast.3
Finally, the 'land of monsters' may be inferred from a

Hebrew legend. Adam was banished to such a place when
he forfeited Eden, and this would be indirectly applicable to
Cain. Dr. Ginzberg writes me this is to be found in Yalkut
Reubeni, Bereshit, I, 88 (ed. Warsaw). Such an interpreta-
tion makes clear at once a difficult passage, which is seen
to be essentially parallel to that at 1. 1263 f. In both, the
banishment of Cain is recorded and the place of his exile is
described. That the latter is in one place 'a land of mon-
sters,' and in the other 'a desert place' is not contradictory,
since each expression supplements the other. It is a place
uninhabited by men, Cain's natural companions, but common
to wild beasts.
1 The Creation,1. 635 f.

2 The 3 Ibid., 1. 1480.
Creation,ed. by Whiteley Stokes, 1. 1670.
8
Returning to other allusions to Cain as " a fugitive and a

vagabond," some emphasize the wandering life of the exile
by various additions. In the Chester play (11. 667-8) Cain
says,
Therefore I will from place to place,
And loke where is the best;
and in the York play, already quoted (p. 862), the angel
condemns Cain with the words:
Of wikkidnesse sen ]ou arte sonne,
Thou shalle be waferyng here and there,
his day.
In the Original Chronicle of Scotland (I, 173) Wyntoun

refers to Cain's punishment in these words:
Bot will and waverand to be ay
In dwyle and dred till his end day.
A more significant addition to the legend is made by

Shakespeare's allusion in Richard II, v, vi, 43. Here
Bolingbroke says to Exton, the murderer of Richard,
With Cain go wander thorough shades of night
And never show thy head by day nor light.
Attention has already been called to this passage in connection

with the moon legend of Cain. We shall show below that
the wandering in darkness may possibly be explained
without reference to the moon.'
It might be expected that the mark set upon Cain would
be the subject of much speculation and of various allusions.
The Jewish Rabbis, as we shall see, had various interpreta-
It is perhaps worth noting that in the Cornish play already referred to

Lamech's servant says of Cain,
It should seem by his favor
That he is some goblin of night (11. 1588-9).
tions of this mark.' In English, however, allusions are

surprisingly few. The morpre gemearcod "marked with
murder" of Beowulf 1265 does not seem to be important.
A significant illusion, however, is found in the prose version
of Adam and Eve, where the sign is mentioned thus:
And to sette Crist a mark upon him, hat he waggede alway fork wit his
heved.2
Further than this the only references I know to the

trembling of Cain are the possible ones in Ritson's song and
Chaucer; see pp. 841, 842.
SOURCES.
It is scarcely necessary to suggest any special source for

the idea of everlasting punishment for Cain. It follows
naturally from the " cursed art thou " of the Lord (Gen. 4, 11),
and from the heinousness of the crime. Some, it is true,
imply that God gave Cain a chance to repent when, instead
of smiting him at once, he asked the question "Where is Abel
thy brother." But when Cain added falsehood to his other
sin there was no hope for him.
That Cain could not appear before the Lord depends not
only on the nature of the curse, but upon the guilty one's
interpretation of it in Genesis 4, 14. "And from thy face
shall I be hid." Ambrose, commenting upon the passage in
De Cain et Abel, II, cap. ix, says,
'Reference has been made to one Rabbinical tradition, that Cain was
given a dog to lead him (see p. 844). According to other Jewish sources
the sign was a pair of horns. This does not seem to occur in English, but
reference is made to it in the Cornish play of The Creation. There
Lamech's boy thinks he sees a 'large bullock' (1. 1546), and Cain says,
God's mark on me is set,
Thou seest it in (the) horn of my forehead (11. 1616-17).
2Horstmann, Legenden, p. 224.
"Qui enim male agit odit lucem, et tenebras et suorum quaerit latibula
delictorum. "
Bede is even more explicit (Hexaemeron, Lib. II):

"Putet quia ejectus est a facie terrae, id est, a sorte sanctae ecclesiae." 1
Bruno Astens paraphrases the words of Cain,

" A terra viventium ejiciar, a facie tua abscondar, te ulterius videre non
merebor. Insuper et in hac terra peregrinationis vagus ubique et profugus
ero, et non solum coelestia, verum etiam nec terrena sine timore et tristitia
potero possidere." 2
With these may be placed some later commentators to
show the seriousness with which the view was held. Diodati,
Pious Annotations upon the Holy Bible, (Ed. 1543) explains
"from thy face :"
" That is, from thy church, where thy name is called upon, and where
thou dost manifest thyself by spiritual revelations and corporal appari-
tions."
Junius, in his Biblia Sacra (1603), says of Genesis 4, 11:

I"LIaledictusesto; proinde exclusus a Deo et ecclesia; quo spectant
Kajini verba, a facie tua abscondam me, vs. 14."
Henry, Exposition of the Books of the Old and New Testament

(third ed., 1725), has this note:
"Driven out this day from theface of the earth. As good have no place on
earth as not have a settled place. Better rest in the grave than not rest at
all. He sees himself excommunicated by it, and cut off from the church
and forbidden to attend on public ordinances. His hands being full of
blood he must bring no more vain oblations; Isa., 1, 13, 15. Perhaps this
he means when he complains that he was driven out from the face of the
earth (for being shut out of the church which none had yet deserted, he
was in effect chased out of the world), and that he was hid from God's face,
being not admitted to come with the sons of God to present himself before
the Lord." 3
1
Migne, 91, 71.
2
Expositio in Genesim, Migne, 164, 173.
3 The
special application of these passages to Beowulf, 168-9, seems to me
to be conclusive. Cf. p. 863.
With regard to Cain's "wandering thorough shades of

night" of Shakespeare's Richard II, v, vi, 43, the inter-
pretation may possibly be connected with the curse. The
words " driven out from the face of the earth " might imply
banishment to darkness, though I find no such meaning
attributed. Or this may be explained in relation to the moon
legend already noted (see p. 844). Still again it might be
accounted for indirectly as Hebrew tradition. According to
one account Cain's descendants live underground (Midrash
Konen); according to another, Cain was given a new
"mark" after repentance, that is the light of the sun was
to shine upon him thereafter (Genesis Rabbah, 18).1 On the
whole it seems better to connect the Shakespearean passage
above with the moon legend, as already suggested.
The extension of the curse upon the ground to the bearing
of thorns occurs in Hebrew tradition and probably comes
from that source. The curse as given in the Talmud is as
follows:
"Cursed be thou from the ground which opened to swallow up thy
brother's blood. No longer shall it give thee aught but thorns." 2
Again the Targums of Onkelos and Ben Uzziel say:

"And it had been, before Cain slew Abel his brother, that the earth
multiplied fruits as the garden of Eden, but from the time that he sinned
and killed his brother it changed to produce thorns and thistles." 3
So far I have not found any references to this extension

of the curse in medieval Christian writings, but there can
be little doubt that some such idea was known in western
Christendom.
That Cain was banished to a land of wild beasts or
monsters is perhaps nowhere stated explicitly. It is not
Dr. Ginzberg has again supplied me with these references, in answer to

a question.
2The Talmud: Selections, trans.
by H. Polano, p. 15.
3
Targumson the Pentateuch, ed. by Etheridge, p. 43.
Hebrew tradition, it would seem.1 Yet Adam, according to

one Hebrew legend, was banished to a land of monsters when
he left Eden, and from this Cain's banishment to a similar
place might easily be inferred. The common interpretation
of the land of "Nod" was as "a land of wandering," "an
unstable place," but it was also a desert, that is uninhabited
by men. The nearest direct reference to wild beasts, and
perhaps quite sufficient for our purpose, is in Ambrose, De
Cain et Abel, Lib. Ii, cap. x, as follows:
"Repulit enim eum a facie sua, et a parentibus abdicatum separatae
habitationis quodam religavit exsilio; eo quod ab humana mansuetudine
transisset ad saevitiam bestiarum."
One might perhaps also note the implications of the following

passage from John a Lapide, interpreting the "mark" of
Cain:
"Horrorem Cain injiciebant coelestes, pariter et infra coelum positae
virtutes: et enim Procopius, praeter fulgura, et corruscationes horrificas,
videbat Cain angelos ignis gladiis sibi mortem minantes; si oculos ad terram
dimittebat, serpentes veneno, leones unguibus, caeterasque feras suis armis
in se irruentes videbat." 2
The reference to the mark of Cain, the wagging head of

the Life of Adam and Eve and probably the trembling of the
moon figure, are based on a Septuagint reading of Genesis 4,
12. There, instead of the equivalent of vagus et profugus,
the reading is ar-evov
wca T'pejov, translated in the Latin
version gemens et tremens. This idea is also found in the
Book of Adam:
"Then Cain trembled and became terrified; and through this sign did
God make an example before all the Creation, as the murderer of his
brother." 3
1Dr. Ginzberg is again my authority, and he also refers to the following

tradition above.
2
CommentariaSacrae Scripturae, on Genesis 4, 15.
3Malin's trans., p. 103.
The Septuagint reading is frequently followed by the

Fathers. For example Ambrose, in Epistolae, Classis I,
Epist. ii, 10, says:
"Denique timens et tremens oberrabat Cain parricidalis facinoris luens
poenas, ut ei remedio sua mors fuerit, quae vagum exsulem formidato per
omnia momente terrore mortis, per mortem exuit." 1
Alcuin, in Interrogationesin Genesin, 89, has,

"Quod est signum Cain, quod posuit [ei] Deus, ut non occideretur?
Ipsum videlicet signum, quod tremens et profugus semper viveret; nec
audere eum uspiam orbis terrarum sedes habere quietas."
Petrus Comestor, Historia Scholastica, Liber Genesis, cap.

xxvii, is even more explicit in saying "Et posuit Deus
signum in Cain, tremoremcapitis."
The reference to the horn in Cain's forehead in the
Cornish play, The Creation, is based on Hebrew tradition.
Compare Ginzberg, Die Haggada, etc., p. 65. In the same
play Cain speaks of himself as covered with hair, a further
part of the same Hebrew story. Another Hebrew legend
doubtless accounts for the dog which accompanies the man
in the moon. Such a dog is the " mark " of Cain in Genesis
Rabbah, 18.2 It was given him by God in order to watch
over him, and some say it was the dog that watched over
Abel's body at his death. The only early Christian reference
to this which I now know is in John a Lapide:
"Posuitque Dominum Cain signum. Quaeres quale ? Rabbini quidam
fabulantur fuisse canem, qui Cainum semper praeibat, et per vias tutas
deducebat. Alii fuisse litteram fronte Caini impressam; alii, vultum
ferum et truculentum. Verum communior sententia est, signum hoc fuisse
tremorem corporis, et mentis ac vultus consternationem, ita ut corpus et
vultus peccatum Caini loquerentur." 3
1
Migne, 16, 919.
2 This reference Dr. Ginzberg furnishes me in a private letter.
3 Commentariumin Genesim.
Bayle, Dict. Histor., article Cain, quotes
Saldinum Ot. Theol., p. 345, to the effect that " the dog which guarded the
flock of Abel was given to Cain for a constant companion in his wandering."
V. THE DEATH OF CAIN.
The lack of any statement in the Bible regarding the

death of Cain was quickly supplied by tradition. In
English the influence of such extension of the Scripture
story is found as early as the Csedmonian Genesis, in which
lines 1090-1103 read as follows:
pa his wifum twsem wordum ssegde
Lameh seolfa, leofum gebeddum,
Adan and Sellan unarlic spel:
'Ic on mor6or ofsloh minra sumne
hyldemaga; honda gewemde
on Caines cwealme mine,
fylde mid folmum fsederEnoses,
orbanan Abeles, eorSan sealde
wseldreor weres. Wat gearwe
]pet pam lichryre on last cymeS
so6cyninges seofonfeald wracu,
micel aeftermane; min sceal swilor
mid grimme gryre golden wur6an
fyll and feorhcwealm, Jonne ic fort scio.'
Then to his two wives Lamech related, to his dear consorts Adah
and Zillah, a shameful tale: 'I have struck down in death one of
my kinsmen, stained my hands with the murder of Cain, felled with
my might the father of Enos, slayer of Abel, given to earth the
blood of a man. Truly I know that for that murder shall follow
sevenfold vengeance of the King of truth, mighty according to the
crime; more terribly shall it be requited with grim horror, my
crime and murder, when I depart hence.'
As we shall see later the poet of Genesis, has here

incorporated the ordinary medieval interpretation of the song
of Lamech, but without adding details of the story. These
details occur in the Middle English Genesis, as shown by
the following passage, lines 471-84:
Lamech ledde long lif til Wan
Dat he wurS bisne, and haved a man
Dat ledde him ofte wudes ner,
To scheten after Wewilde der.
Also he mistagte, also he schet,

And Cairn in Se wude is let;
His knape wende it were a der,
And Lamech droge [h]is arwe ner
An[d] let it flegen of Ze streng;
Cairn unwarde it underfeng,
Grusnede and strekede, and starf wiSan.
Lamech wi6 wre6e [h]is knape nam,
Unbent [h]is boge, and bet and slog,
Til he fel dun on dedes swog.1
There is a bare allusion to the same story in a couplet of

the Cursor Mundi, (1513-14):
pis Lamech 2 was cald Lamech Je blind:
Caym he slogh wit chaunce we find.3
The whole story is told in Trevisa's Translation of
Higden's Polychronicon, Book II, chap. 5, on the basis of
the Latin by Petrus Comestor. The passage reads as
follows:
(Petrus, 27). Lamech, an archer but somdel blynde, hadde a 3onglynge
hat ladde hym while he honted for pley and likynge, oJer for love of bestes
skynnes; ffor men ete no flesche tofore Noes flood. And hit happe[d] hat
he slow Caym hat loted 4 among he busshes, and wende Pat it were a wylde
beste; and for his ledere warned hym no3t, he slow hym also. And Per-
fore, siNHehat Caym his synne was ipunisched sevenfold, pat is in he sevenbe
generacioun,-for Lamech was be sevenke from Adam in Jat lyne,-Lamech
his synne was ipunisched sevene and seventy folde; ffor seven and
seventy children jat come of hym were dede in Noes floode, okere for
so many generacions were bytwene Lamech and Crist bat payed a payne
for us alle.5
The story is also repeated by Wyntoun, who has this to

say of Lamech:
Genesis and Exodus, EETS., 7, p. 14.

2
lameth both times.
MS.
3Version of the Cotton MS.; chaunce of the second line is chaunge in

the MS.
4Another
reading is loyterd.
5Rolls Series, Higden, ii, 229.
He wes he first hat schot in bow,

Ouher with bolt or braid arow.
Sa fell it quhen he fal3eit sycht,
For eild had myrknyt all his mycht.
His [boy] bad him he suld draw neire
Quhare hat he said he saw a deire;
With hat be takle up he drew,
And with hat schot he Cayne slew,
pat lay lurkand hare in a busk.'
The story is fully worked out in dramatic form in the

Cornish play of The Creation, but does not differ in essential
details from those already quoted. See references on p. 867.
SOURCES.
The story of the death of Cain at the hands of Lamech is

a characteristic Hebrew tradition. The rather unintelligible
song of Genesis 4, 23-4, was thus given a meaning, though it
may easily seem at some violence to interpretation. Among
other things it was necessary to assume that Cain had
outlived six generations, but even this did not deter the
imaginative Jewish commentators and the legend became a
highly dramatic narrative. We may quote it as given in
Baring-Gould's Legendsof the Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 97:
" Now Lamech became blind in his old age and he was led about by the
boy Tubalcain. Tubalcain saw Cain in the distance and, supposing from
the horn on his forehead that he was a beast, said to his father, 'Span thy
bow and shoot.' Then the old man discharged his arrow and Cain fell
dead. And when he ascertained that he had slain his great ancestor he
smote his hands together, and in so doing by accident struck his son and
killed him." 2
This legendary account of Cain's death appears in early

Christian literature, though not always accepted by Christian
writers. The Book of Adam gives an extended account,
1
Original Chronicle, I, 191.
2 Cf.
Ginzberg, Die Haggada, etc., p. 65.
with numerous incidents somewhat different from any other.

Yet the facts are essentially the same:
Then said he [Lamech's boy who guided him], 'O my Lord, is that a
wild beast or a robber?' And Lamech said to him, 'Make me to
understand which way he looks, when he comes up.' Then Lamech bent
his bow, placed an arrow on it, and fitted a stone in a sling, and when Cain
came out from the open country, the shepherd said to Lamech: 'Shoot,
behold he is coming.' Then Lamech shot at Cain with his arrow and hit
him in his side. And Lamech struck him with a stone from his sling, that
fell upon his face and knocked out both his eyes; then Cain fell at once
and died. Then Lamech and the young shepherd came up to him and
found him lying on the ground. And the young shepherd said to him, 'It
is Cain, our grandfather, whom thou hast killed, O Lord.' Then was
Lamech sorry for it.1
As an example of one who did not accept the story we

may cite the Questiones ex Vetero Testamento formerly
attributed to Augustine. Here the sixth question is, "Si
Lamech occidit Cain, sicut putatur?" to which an answer
is given against the idea of the legend.2
Rabanus Maurus, on the other hand, accepts the story:
"Majorum nostrorum ista est sententia, quod putant in septima
generatione a Lamech interfectum Cain. .. . [Lamech] qui septimus ab
Adam, non sponte, sicut in quodam Hebraeo volumine scribitur, interfecit
Cain. Et ipse postea confitetur: Quia virum, etc." 3
" Lamech autem percutiens interpretatur. Iste enim percutiens interfecit
Cain. Quod etiam ipse postea se perpetrasse uxoribus confitetur." 4
Other medieval writers might be cited. It will be

sufficient to add Petrus Comestor, Historia Scholastica Liber
Genesis, cap. xxviii:
"Lamech vero vir sagittarius diu vivendo caliginem oculorum incurrit,
et habens adolescentem ducem; dum exerceret venationem, pro delectatione
tantum, et usu pellium, quia non erat usus carnium ante diluvium, casu
interfecit Cain inter fructeta, aestimans ferum, quem, quia ad indicium
juvenis dirigens sagittam, interfecit."
1 2Migne, 35, 2221.

Malin, ii, ch. xiii.
3Commentariain Genesim, II, i (Migne, 107, 506).
De UniversoLibri Viginti Duo, II, 1 (Migne, 111, 33).
VI. CAIN'S DESCENDANTS.
Numerous extra-biblical elements of the Cain story in

English are connected with the descendants of the first
murderer. We may well begin with what is, in many
respects, the most notable of these allusions, that of Beowulf
104 f. I quote from what I have already suggested as the
beginning of the Christian portion :
Fifelcynnes eard
wonsseli[g] wer weardode hwile,
si}1an him Scyppend forscrifen haefde;
in Caines cynne jone cwealm gewraec
ece Drihten, ]ses pe he Abel slog.
Ne gefeah he ]sere foehSe, ac he hine feor forwraec,
Metod for by mane, mancynne fram.
1 Full credit must here be given to those who have already commented on
this Beowulf passage. Grimm, in his Deutsche Mythologie (1835, third ed.
1854), first called attention to the Hebrew legend of Cain and his posterity,
as explaining Grendel's descent from Cain in Beowul. Bouterwek, also, in
Ccedmon'sdes Angelsachsen biblische Dichtungen (1854) associated the pas-
sages connected with the Cain legend and the allusions in Beowulf, making
some suggestions which will be considered later. Again, in his article Das
Beowulfslied,Germania, I, 385 f. (1856), he refers to the Book of Enoch and
rabbinical lore as explaining Grendel's relationship to Cain. He mentions
particularly the tradition that Cain was the son, not of Adam, but of
Samael, the chief of the devils, and that after Cain's death two evil
spirits were born from his spirit, and from them all evil spirits. Bouterwek
also regarded the man-devouring element in the Grendel story as Hebrew
folklore, saying "Menschenfressende Riesen kennt das germanische Hei-
denthum nicht." He emphasized the devil relationship by noting the
expressions used for Grendel, but did not do full justice to these, or make
any full examination of the origin of the legend. Bugge mentions the
Grendel-Cain relationship in Studien iiber der Entstehung der nordischen
Gotter-und Heldensagen, and in an article in Paul und Braune's Beitrdge,
xII, 81, referring to Bouterwek above. English editors of Beowulf have
added nothing to the subject. Thorpe barely mentions the Grendel-Cain
relationship as "no doubt of Rabbinical origin," a note which may easily
have come from Bouterwek. Earle, whose annotations are the most copious
that have appeared, passes over it entirely.
Danon untydras ealle onwocon,

eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas;
swylce gigantas, ha wi6 Gode wunnon
lange Prage; he him Saeslean forgeald.
A land of monsters the unhappy man inhabited awhile, after the
Creator had condemned him; on Cain's kin the eternal Lord avenged
that murder, because he slew Abel. He [Cain] rejoiced not in that
feud, but he [the Lord] banished him far from mankind, the Creator,
for that crime. Thence arose all monstrous births, etens and elves
and spirits of hell; the giants likewise, that strove against God a
long time; for this he gave them their reward.
There are here noted two classes of beings which sprang
from Cain. First are the monsters (untydras), further
defined as etens,' elves, and spirits of hell (orcneas). Second
are the giants who strove against God. Although the two
are closely associated, the division is a convenient one and
will be retained in the discussion.
A. Monsters and Spirits of Evil Descendedfrom Cain.
It has usually been assumed that the relation of Grendel

to Cain is an interpolation and that, by removing a few
lines, we can restore the original Teutonic and unchristian
character of the Grendel story. But the investigation of
the Cain legend throws new light upon this whole idea.
Grendel is one of a class of beings well recognized as
belonging to the evil progeny of Cain, not only here but
elsewhere. As is well known the connection of Grendel
with Cain is repeated in what is said of Grendel's mother,
Beowulf, 1258-66:
Grendles modor
ides, agleecwif, yrm6e gemunde,
se Pe wseteregesan wunian scolde,
I can not refrain from retaining this convenient word, which remained
in English to modern times, as in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the
Burning Pestle, I, ii.
cealde streamas, siljan Cain wear6

to ecgbanan angan bro6or,
foederenmsege; he ha fag gewat,
mor]re gemearcod, mandream fleon,
westen warode. panon woc fela
geosceaftgasta; wses aseraGrendel sum.
Grendel's mother remembered her misery, the woman, wife of a
monster, who was compelled to inhabit the terrible sea after Cain
became a murderer of his own brother; he then guilty, marked with
murder, went fleeing from the joys of men, dwelt in the desert.
From him were born many fateful demons; Grendel was one of
them.
Besides, this connection with the evil progeny of Cain

explains effectively many epithets and descriptive phrases
applied to Grendel and his mother. Grendel, especially, is
called by such names as would be applicable to a monster of
evil birth, or a devil. He isfeond on helle 'fiend from hell'
at first (1. 101), and feond in twelve other lines (143, 164,
279, 439, 636, 698, 748, 962, 970, 984, 1273, 1276). In
two of these (164, 1276) he is the more significant feond
mancynnes. Grendel is also wiht unhcelo (120), wergan gast
(133), ellorgast, ellorgcest(807, 1349) and possiblyi in 86
where the MS. has ellengcest. He is also deorc deatscua
(160),' helbegn (142),2 helruna (163), hellehafta (788),
hellegast (1274).3 He is Godes ondsaca twice (786, 1682),
hceiene sawle (852) and hcemenesagain (986); manscaZa
For the force of this devil name compare Crist, 257, and the note in
Cook's Christ.
2Ms. healbegnes,but I have no hesitation in accepting Ettmiiller's con-
jecture helbegnes.
3 In view of this
frequent use of gast (gcest) for Grendel I question whether
we should not read gcest'spirit, demon' for gcest'guest, enemy' in lines
102, 1331, 1995, 2073. Possibly also it might be regarded as the correct
reading for gist in line 141. In such case it would be explained as late West
Saxon for Anglian gest (i. e. gest, giest, WS. gest), which was misunder-
stood by the scribe. The Toller-Bosworth dictionary suggests that gcest
means 'spirit' in wcelgcestof 1331, and also in 1995.
(712, 737), and he is included among laSum scuccum and

scinnum (938) who had oppressed the land. He is called
eoten twice (668, 761), a name of one of the other descendants
of Cain (112) often associated with the devils elsewhere,
and he and his mother are described as deofla (1680),
geosceaftgasta (1266), dyrna gasta (1357) ellorgcestas(1349).
Grendel's mother is also ellorgast (gcest) in lines 1617, 1621,
and mansca6Sain 1339. The close parallelism between these
epithets and those used for the devils in such poems as
Genesis, the Complaint of the Fallen Angels, and others is
also to be especially regarded. Indeed such comparison
shows that many of the terms describing Grendel and his
mother are similar to those chosen when devils and demons
must be meant. There can be no reasonable doubt,
therefore, that the Beowulf poet intended them in this sense.
Equally significant are the descriptive phrases used for
Grendel and his mother. Grendel is mane fah (978), who is
to await sentence of God at domesday (miclan domes). In
addition the following significant expressions are used of him
or of his devil mother:
711 Godes yrre baer;
811 he fag wi; God;
726 him of eagum stod
ligge gelicost leoht unfaeger;
755 wolde on heolstre fleon,
secan deofla gedrseg;
801 Pone synsca&a
aenig ofer eor~an irenna cyst,
gu0billa nan, gretan nolde;
808 ond se ellorgast
on feonda geweald feor si;ian;
852 Peerhim hel onfeng;
2088 glof [of Grendel] eal gegyrwed
deofles craeftum;
2127 hic J'et lic setber
feondes faemmum.
Grendel is constantly referred to as a monster of darkness.

While this characteristic is not exclusively connected with
Cain and his descendents of course, it was attributed to them
in medieval tradition as we have shown. It may therefore
be noted here as strengthening the argument above. The
passages included are those beginning with lines 87, 115,
134, 161, 166, 193, 275, 410, 646, 683, 702, 707.
Again, the devil relationship of Grendel and>his mother
may be emphasized by comparison with the story of the
firedrake. In the latter no single phrase or descriptive
epithet applied to the firedrake can be tortured into any
connection with devils, or creatures of evil in the Christian
sense. The same is in general true of all the episodes in
Beowulf, as of the swimming match, the struggle with the
sea-monsters in the adventure with Grendel's mother, and
the Sigmund story, except that two expressions in the
account of the swimming match, fah feondsca6a (554) and
manfordcedlan (563), might possibly have such connection
under the influence of the myth concerning Cain's devil
descendants. Besides, the whole story of the adventure
with Grendel's mother, believed by some not to have place
in the original upon which our poem is based, would also
have a new reason for its existence. When the original
story of some monster of the moor was definitely associated
with the devil of Christian writings, it was not unnatural
that the Teutonic conception of the mother of the devil
should be grafted upon the original, in order to emphasize
the completeness of Beowulfs victory. That the latter story
is a late and less artistic imitation of the Grendel-Beowulf
story will perhaps be generally admitted.
Considering all these facts in their relation to the legend
of Cain, with which Grendel is clearly associated at the
beginning, I have no question that the author of the first two
adventures conceived of the monsters as belonging to the
devil descendents of the first murderer. The so-called
interpolation regarding Cain, far from being isolated as often

supposed, has an intimate relation to the whole of the first
two adventures of the poem. This being true, it confirmsthe
explanation already given of such a passage as that of
Beowulf, 168-9.1 If these lines, so long a puzzle to
commentators, be assumed as applying to Grendel in his
devil relationship to Cain, their natural significance is at
once clear and they need no emendation of any kind.2 They
but emphasize the crime of Cain and the punishment to him
and his descendants, without hope of pardon, which is quite
in accord with medieval tradition and interpretation. Some
other passages will also deserve a similar reference, at least
by way of conjecture.
Explicit reference to the devil descendants of Cain does
not appear in any other Old English poem, or in Old
English prose so far as I have been able to discover from
general reading. Such a reference is found, however, in a
striking passage of the Middle High German poetical Genesis
which is as old as the first part of the twelfth century. It
reads as follows in the text edited by Diemer:3
Do ne wolde er in niht vliesen; puzze gebot er im chiesen;
er gap im ein zeichen daz in er arge nieman dorste anreichen.
Do vloch er als ein wadilaere ze vil manegem iare;
ubil was sin herzze und sin mut, diu puzze was im borgut;
er lerte siniu chint dei zobir diu hiute sint.
Do wurden die schuzlinge gelich sinem stamme;
ubil wuchir si paren, dem tievil si gehorsam waren.
Adam gebot den chinden bi ir libe sumeliche wurzzen ze miden;
dar umbe daz si si niht entarten an der ir geburte;
sin gebot si werchurn, ir geburt si verlurn.
Dei chint dei si gebaren ungelich si waren;
1See p. 863.
2
Some have even tried to take from the passage any Christian signifi-
cance whatever. See, for example, Pogatscher's emendation formetode
instead of for Metode, Paul and Braune's Beitrige, xix, 544.
3 Genesisund
Exodus, von Joseph Diemer, I, pp. 26-27.
9
sumelich hieten hobet als ein hunt, sumelich hieten an den brusten munt
an den ahselen ogen, dei musen sich des hobetes geloben;
sumelich bedahten sich mit den oren, wundirlich ist ez ze horen.
Etlicher het einen fuz der was michel unde groz,
der lief also balde sam ein tier datzze walde;
Etlichiu gebar ein chint daz gie an alien vieren sam ein rint.
Sumelich vluren begarwe [ir vil] schone varwe,
si werden swarz und eislich, [dem] do niht was gelich,
dei ogen schinen in alle stunde, die zene waren lanch in den munde;
[swenne si] die liezzen plechen so mahten si den tievil schrechen.
Alsolich leben liezzen die ver[chornen] al ir aftirchomen
Swie dise [inne] waren [getan] die geschaft musen dise ozzan han.
Then he [God] did not wish to destroy him [Cain]; evil punish-
ment he inflicted upon him. He set a mark upon him that no one
might touch him with evil intention. Then he fled like a vagabond
for many years; evil was his heart and his mind, the punishment
was very good for him. He taught his children the magic that
exists to-day; then became the offshoots like the parent stem; evil
fruit they bore, to the devil they became obedient. Adam had com-
manded his children, upon their lives to avoid certain herbs, that
they might not thereby degenerate in their nature; his command
they [these evil descendants of Cain] disregarded, their nature they
lost. The children which they bore were various (ungelich); some
had heads like a dog; some had mouths on their breasts, eyes on
their shoulders, and had to live without heads; some covered them-
selves with their ears, wonderful it is to hear. Some had one foot
which was great and large, who straightway ran into the wood like
a beast; some brought forth children that walked on all fours like
cattle. Some lost altogether their beautiful complexion; they be-
came black and terrible, there was nothing like them; their eyes
were gleaming all the time, the teeth in their mouths were long;
whenever they showed them they frightened the devil. Such life
left the abandoned ones to all those who came after them; whatso-
ever inner nature the former had, such outer nature the latter had
to have.
The only peculiarity of this passage is the reference to the

magic effect of certain herbs, perhaps an addition from
German folklore. It seems to be introduced to explain the
Cf. p. 895-6. Note also Eschenbach's Parzival (ed. of Lachmann), p.

247, a reference given me by Prof. Walz, of Harvard.
transformation which was indirectly, even here, the result of

wicked natures.
In Middle English poems there are occasional allusions
to the devil kin of Cain, and even to monster descendants
similar to Grendel in animal characteristics. The nearest
approach to the latter is found in Ywaine and Gawin,2 where
a monster of the wood in the form of a man but with some
likeness to animals is spoken of as belonging to Cain's race.
Thus, in lines 558-561,
The forest fast than wald he seke,
And als the karl of Kaymes3 kyn,
And the wilde bestes with him.
The description of the monster, in which his likeness to

Grendel and the medieval devil in general may be readily
seen, is found at line 243 f., as follows;
Oway I drogh me, and with that
I saw some whar a man sat
On a lawnd, the fowlest wight
That ever yit man saw in syght.
He was a lathly creatur
For fowl he was out of mesur;
A wonder mace in hand he hade,
And sone my way to him I made.
His hevyd, methought, was als grete
Als of a rouncy or a nete;
Unto his belt hang his hare,
And efter that byheld I mare;
To his forhede byheld I than,
Was bradder than twa large span;
He had eres als ane olyfant,
For some of these references I am indebted to notes by Professor Skeat

in his edition of Piers Plowman, EETS., 67, 225 (1885), and by Professor
Kittredge, PFB., 13, 210 (1887).
2 Ritson, Ancient English Metrical Romances, revised by Goldsmid, I, 133.
3This is the ordinary form of the name in Middle English. It is
evidently based on Low Latin or Old French Cai(y)m, and has possibly
been confused with Cham (Ham).
And was wele more than geant.

His face was ful brade and flat,
His nese was cutted als a cat,
His browes war like litel buskes,
And his tethe like bare tuskes;
A ful grete bulge opon his bak
Thar was noght made withowten lac;
His chin was fast until his breast;
On his mace he gan him rest.
In calling attention to this passage in his note, Professor

Kittredge mentions that there is no reference to Cain in the
French original. The allusion therefore is not only of
English origin but may have some connection with older
conceptions of such monsters as Grendel which had been
handed down in the lore of the folk. Another passage of
similar import to this in Ywaine and Gawin occurs in Kyng
Alisaunder, lines 1932 to 1935:1
And of Sab, the duk Mauryn
He was of Kaymes kunrede;
His men non kouthe speke no grede,
Bote al so houndes grenne and berke.
While the legend of monsters as descendants of Cain does

not seem to appear in other Middle English works, there is
a somewhat natural extension of it in many places. By this,
evil men of any description are spoken of as belonging to
Cain's kin, though of course without implication of blood
relationship. An example is found in Havelok the Dane,
lines 2044-2046,2 where those who had persecuted the hero
are thus spoken of:
And yif he livede to foule theves,
pat weren of Kaym kin and Eves,
He scholden hange by be necke.
The union of Cain and Eve in this place is not strange
I Weber, Metrical Romances, I, 83. Compare also p. 833.

2Edition of Skeat, EETS., 4, p. 57.
considering what an unenviable reputation the poor mother

of mankind has borne in all literatures. As already noticed,
she was even said to have allowed the devil to usurp the
conjugal rights of Father Adam and thus have given birth
to the illstarred Cain. It is barely possible that the poet of
IHavelok alluded to this tradition in the line above. Still
another allusion to wicked men as Cain's kin occurs in the
ballad of Little John Nobody, preserved by Percy,' one
stanza of which contains the line,
Such caitives count to be come of Cain's kind.
This connection of men of evil with Cain is natural

figurative language, but there is also some basis for it in the
reference to the descendants of Cain as doing all kinds of
wickedness, another extra-biblical idea based on Hebrew
and Christian tradition as already noted.2 It appears
especially in those accounts of Cain which mention no devil
or monster progeny. Thus, while it is not found in Beowulf,
it is in Ccedmon,lines 1255-1257:
Ne syndon me on ferhte freo from gewitene,
cneoriss Caines, ac me ksetcynn hafa6
sare abolgen.
They have not departed from me, blameless in life, the children
of Cain, but that race hath sorely offended.
The same is true of the Middle English Genesis, as in lines

527 to 529,
Fif hundred ger of Sat 6usent
Dat mankin was on werlde sent,
Caymes sunes wrogten unlage;
and of Cursor Mundi, lines 1223-1232 and 1557-1560.

They read,
1Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Second Series, Book ii, iii.

2Compare p. 863.
Unseli Caym hat ai was saked,

With God and man kan was he hatted,
He alswa with his oxspring;
pai luved our Laverd nankin thing,
For kai him warryd with wickud dedis.
He pam forsoke in al her nedis.
To wrik hare wik[ke] wil ]ai thoght,
Agh of him na stod ham noght.
pat boght kai siken wiif and barn,
With water ware kai all forfarn.
In Adam time was wrang inogh,

Bot pis tim wex wel mare wogh,
Namlik amang Kaym kin,
pat lited Pam noght bot in sin.
Similar passages from Piers Plowman, Text A, x, 135 f.; C,

xI, 217 f., need not be quoted here since they will be used,
along with other lines, for another purpose in another part of
this paper. From such as these it would be easy to extend
the use of Cain's name to any evil men, as in the references
already given.
B. Cain and the Giants.
The second class of Cain's descendants mentioned in

Beowulf 111 f., are "the giants who strove with God a long
time." The allusion has received slight notice by commen-
tators. Indeed, it has usually been passed over in silence.
Yet it becomes entirely clear in the light of medieval
explanation of certain passages of Scripture. Moreover, it
has intimate connection with the story of Cain. The Cain
story of the fourth chapter of Genesisis followed by a chapter
of genealogies. Chapter 6 begins with the apparently dis-
connected account of the giants who sprang from the union
of the "sons of God " with "the daughters of men." A
modern reader would not closely connect the two, or puzzle
himself to explain this singular progeny of a singular union.
The medieval mind was not so easily satisfied. Here was a

tale which excited wonder, and to which some explanation
must be made. Both Jewish and Christian commentators,
therefore, connected these giants with the preceding historical
passages. When this was done it was easy to assume one of
the partners in this new union as descended from the wicked
Cain.
Besides, the giants of Genesis 6 were not only connected
with Cain on the one side, but more directly with the flood
than is warranted by the Scripture narrative. These giants
seduced mankind, opposed God, and by their wickedness
brought the flood upon the earth. The full proof of these
interpretations will be given hereafter. We may now turn
to the embodiment of these legendary additions to Scripture
in certain English works.
The legend of the giant descendants of Cain, and their
destruction by the flood, may be best considered as it appears
in one of its earliest and fullest English forms. This occurs
in the CaedmonianGenesis, lines 1245-84:
Da giet wses Sethes cynn,
leofes leodfruman, on lufan swi6e
Drihtne dyre and domeadig,
o']aet bearn Godes bryda ongunnon
on Caines cynne secan,
wergum folce, and him boerwif curon
ofer Metodes est monna eaforan,
scyldfulra maeg6 scyne and faegere.
pa reordade rodora Waldend,
wra moncynne, and ha worde cwse :
'Ne syndon me on ferhte freo from gewitene,
cneoriss Caines, ac me soetcynn hafa6
sare abolgen. Nu me Sethes beam
torn niwia6, and him to nimaS
msege' to gemseccum minra feonda;
boerwifa wlite onwod grome,
idesa ansien and ece feond
folcdriht wera ha aeron fri6e wTeron.'
Si';an hundtwelftig geteled rime
wintra on worulde wraecebisgedon

fnegebeoda, hwonne Frea wolde
on wserlogan wite settan,
and on dea' slean dsedum scyldige
gigantmuecgas, Gode unleofe,
micle manscea6an, Metode laSe.
pa geseah selfa sigora Waldend,
hwset waesmonna manes on eor6an,
and ]fet hie wseron womma 1riste,
inwitfulle, he ]tet unfiegere
wera cneorissum gewrecan ]ohte,
forgripan gumcynne grimme and sare
heardum mihtum. Hreaw hine swi6e
asethe folcmaegha fruman aweahte,
aeelinga ord, ha he Adam sceop;
cwse' btet he wolde for wera synnum
eall ase6an lset on eorZan wses
forleosan lica gehwilc, hara he lifes gast
fae6mum heahte. Eall ]set Frea wolde
on tsere toweardan tide acwellan
he ha nealaehte niSa bearnum.
Then was the race of Seth, the beloved chieftain, in much esteem,
dear to the Lord and blessed with power, until the sons of God began
to seek brides from the race of Cain, the cursed folk, and there chose
wives for themselves against the wish of the Creator, daughters of
men, maids of the guilty race, beauteous and fair. Then spoke the
ruler ef the heavens, wroth with mankind, and these words uttered:
"They have not departed from me blameless in life, the family of
Cain, but me hath that race sorely displeased. Now the children of
Seth are renewing my anger, and are taking for mates daughters of
my foes; there the beauty of women has wickedly influenced the
race of men,-beauty of women and the eternal fiend,-which before
was at peace." Afterwards a hundred and twenty winters the fated
people were busied in evil, when the Lord wished to inflict punish-
ment on the perfidious and strike down in death the giant race,
guilty in deed, hateful to God, mighty evil doers, hostile to the
Creator. When the Lord of victory himself saw what was men's
wickedness on earth, and that they were daring in crimes, full of
evil, he resolved to avenge that terribly on the race of men, over-
whelm mankind grimly and sorely with hard might. Much it re-
pented him that he had made a beginning of the tribes of men, first
of the noble ones when he shaped Adam; said that he would, for the
sins of men, overwhelm all that were on earth, destroy each body
that had the spirit of life in its embrace. All that would the Lord
overthrow in that toward time which then was drawing near to the
children of men.
This account of the giants is immediately followed by the

flood in which the giant descendants of Cain are destroyed.
In this passage Sethes cynne (1. 1249), Sethesbeam (1. 1257),
and beam Godes (1. 1248) are the same. It is especially
important that the " daughters of men " of Scripture are here
plainly called Caines cynne (1. 1249), and the fruit of the
union gigantmcecgas (1. 1268), micle manscea6San(1. 1269).
The specific period of evil, one hundred and twenty years,
comes from Genesis, 6, 3: "Yet shall his days be an
hundred and twenty years." This was believed by some to
refer to the length of life allowed the giants, by others to the
period to which man's life had been at this time reduced.
The Csedmonianaccount of the giant sons of Cain has an
interesting parallel in the Old Saxon Genesis, with which as
we know our Old English Genesis has intimate relations in
other respects. The passage is in the second of those
fragments discovered by Zangemeister in 1894. It breaks
off before any account of the flood, but enough is given to
show the relation of the giants to Cain.1
Thann quamum eft fan Kaina kraftaga liudi,
helidos hardmuoda, habdnunim hugi strangan
wre-an willean, ne weldun waldandas
lera lestian, ac habdun im le'an strit;
wohsun im wrislico; that was thiu wirsa giburd
kuman fan Kaina. Bigunnun im copun thuo
weros wiR undor twisk; thas warS anwer6it san
Se;es gesidi, war' seggio folc
menu gimengiI, endi wurlun manno barn
liudi le'a them thitt lioht giscuop.
Then descended from Cain a powerful people, hardhearted
heroes, who had in them a strong mind, evil purpose; they would
' Bruchstiickedes altsdchsischenBibeldichtung, p. 47.

not follow the counsels of the Lord but had in them hostile strife;
grew to giant size; that was the worst offspring that came from
Cain. Then began men to marry among them, and by this were
Seth's sons at once corrputed, the folk was stained with evil, and
the children of men became a hostile people toward him who created
light.
There is no allusion to the flood in this fragment as it breaks

off, after some lines on Enoch, without returning to the
Cain story.
It is now possible to consider what must be regarded as a
fairly complete allusion in Beowulf to the destruction of the
giants by the flood, though one part of it has been differently
interpreted. The first part occurs at line 113, where the
giants are mentioned as descendants of Cain who strove
against God a long time and for that strife received their
reward. For the connection the two lines preceding may be
quoted:
Danon untydras ealle onwocon,
eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas,
swylce gigantes ha wiS Gode wunnon
lange ]rage; he him ]aes lean forgeald.
'Thence awoke all monstrous births, etens and elves and spirits
of hell, the giants likewise that strove with God a long time; for
that he gave them their reward.'
We now know that these giants are none other than those of
Genesis6, and that the reward, or retribution given them was
the flood. Another passage in the Beowulf, lines 1687 to
1693, makes more definite mention of the flood as retribution
for this same strife against God and, in the light of the present
discussion, must be connected immediately with the legend
of Cain. It reads,
Hro'gar madelode, hylt sceawode,

ealde lafe on ?semwses or writen
fyrngewinnes sy;]an flod ofsloh,
gifen geotende, giganta cyn,
frecne geferan ;1 kaetwses fremde ]eod

ecean Dryhtne; him Tsesendelean
kurh wseteres wylm Waldend sealde.
Hrothgar spoke, looked on the hilt, the old heirloom on which
was written the beginning of that old strife when the flood, the over-
flowing ocean, cut off the race of the giants, the insolent men; that
was a people estranged from the eternal Lord; for this the Creator,
through the fury of waters, gave them their final reward.
It is true that another interpretation has been placed upon
this last passage, since it has been regarded as an allusion to
the heathen gods of northern mythology, and but slightly
changed from an original heathen form. Ettmiiller, in his
translation of Beowulf (1840), has the following note:
"Der alte streit ist wohl die Feindschaft zwischen den G6ttern (Ansen,
Asen) und den Hrimthursen. Die Voluspa erwihnt gleichfalls diesen
ersten Kampf in Strophe 22. Der undichtende Monch deutete die Sache
biblisch auf die vorsintfluchtlichen Menschen, die er gelehrt Giganten
nennet, und dadurch auf den griechischen Mythus hinweiset."
Professor Blackburn also, in his article on The Christian

Coloring of Beowulf,2 apparently without remembering
Ettmuller's note, says:
"A trace of the older heathen version may be seen, I think, in the
allusion to the flood, just mentioned. The sinners that lost their lives by
the waters are there called giants, and one or two peculiarities of expression
lead me to hazard the suggestion that the passage, before it was Christian-
ized, contained an allusion to the Northern tale of the war of the gods with
the giants."
But there is nothing in the passage which is not fully

explained by the legend of Cain, the giants, and the flood, as
already outlined and commonly accepted during the middle
ages. The two passages in Beowulf simply complete one
another, and one is as much Christian as the other. Though
1Sievers's reading (PBB., 9, 140), for frecne geferdon of the MS. Yet
it must be said that, except for its abruptness in construction, the textual
reading is eminently appropriate to the giants of Genesis.
2
Publications of Mod. Lang. Association, 12, 218.
in fragments, they give the whole of the legend as it has

already been shown to exist in the Ceedmonian and Old
Saxon paraphrases of Genesis. Of course it need not be
urged that this fragmentary allusion, in different places to
different parts of the same story is one of the most
characteristic things about the Beowulf.'
In Middle English poetry the legend of the giants as
descendants of Cain appears several times. These are in
general derived from later narratives of medieval Latin
writers, rather than from Old English literature. Probably
the first appearance of the story in this period occurs in the
Middle English Genesis, 11. 527 to 556, as follows:
Fif hundred ger of 1at 6usent
Dat mankin was on werlde sent,
Caymes sunes wrogten unlage,
Wi; bre6ere wifes horeplage;
And on Wesexte hundred ger
Wimmen welten weres mester,
And swilc woded wenten on
Golhed unkinde 2 he gunnen don;
And Wefifte hundred ger
Wapmen bigunnen quad mester,
Bitwen hemselven unwreste plage,
A Sefis kinde, agenes lage.
Two hundred ger after to wunes,
Miswiven hem gunnen Se6es sunes,
Agenes &atAdam forbead,
And leten Godes frigtihed;
He chosen hem wives of Caym,
And mengten wit waried kin;
1I have left this passage as it was in the paper read before the Modern
Language Association in 1900. My paper was sent to Professor Bright in
1904 for the use of one of his students, and Dr. James E. Routh, in his
dissertation, Two Studies on the Ballad Theory of the Beowulf, accepts the
above interpretation, as well as some other of my conclusions. See espe-
cially p. 28 f. More recently Professor Klaeber has suggested the same
interpretation in Textual Interpretationof Beowulf (Mod. Phil., II, p. 459).
2Ms. hunkinde. 3 hunwreste.
Of hem woren Se getenes boren,

Migti men, and figti [and] forloren;
He wrogten manige [sinne] and bale,
Of 'Sat migt is litel tale;
For Sat he God ne luveden nogt,
Dat migt is al to sorge brogt.
For swilc sinful dedes sake,
So cam on werlde wreche and wrake
For to blissen swilc sinnes same,
Dat it ne wexe at more unframe ;
Do wex a flod 'is werlde within,2
And overflowged men and deres kin.
The immediate source of this passage, as of so much of the

poem, is the Historia Scholastica of Petrus Comestor who is
closely followed in the details of the narrative, as may be
seen by comparing this with the selection on page 926.
Special attention need be called only to the direct connection
of the giants, ME. getenes from OE. eotenas, with the flood,
which is sent because of their evil lives.
Here may be mentioned also a passage in the Middle
High German Genesis, which uses this part of Cain legend,
as of the demon descendants already noticed. The extract
reads as follows, in Diemer's text (I, p. 26):
Den dritten sun gewan Adam, Set was des chindes nam;
der ward ein vil gut chnecht, er minnot niht daz unreht.
Der selbe gewan chint dei Got hiute liep sint;
daz Goteswerch si lerten, ir mut si dar an cherten;
So liebe dienten si dir trohtin daz si hiezzen dei chint din;
mit den werchen und mit dem namen waren si gecheiden
uon Kain chinden. Geschriben wir vinden:
der vater hiez Beliali, daz ist der ubil tievil
der Adam schunte an die ersten sunte;
der im des paradises erbunne und allem manchunne,
den sin selbes ubile vertreip uon himele;
der engund uns des niht daz wir habeten daz ewige lieht
daz er vlos durch ubirmut, do er sich gelichen wolde Got;
der geriet och Kain daz er sluch den brudir sin.
Schoniu wip wurten von Kain geburte;
1hunframe. 2widhin.
an grozze ubil wanden si sich, idoch was in Got genedich;

er machit si schone und lussam, Got waren si niht gehorsam.
Do dei Gotes chint gesahen des tieuels chint
also rehte wolgetan, ir minne buten si ein andir an.
Von ir beidir minne michiliu chint si gewunnen,
gigant daz waren, allez ubil begunde sich meren.
Got gero sere daz er den mennisc het geschephet.
Do begunde unsir Trohtin darumbe harte riuich sin
daz er ie geschuf den man nach sinem bilde getan;
ez gero in von herzzen, sere begund ez in smerzzen,
die er geschuf ze den eren daz die dem tievil solden werden
do wart im ze mute daz er mit der sinvlute
die werlde wolde vliesen unde sinen zorn also verchiesen.
Then Adam begot a third son, Seth was the child's name; he
became a very good man, he loved not wrong. He also begot
children who are dear to God to-day; God's work they learned, they
turned their minds to it. So lovingly served they thee, Lord, that
they were called thy children; in works and in name were they
separated from Cain's children. Of them [the latter]. we find
written, their father was called Belial, that is the wicked devil, who
incited Adam to the first sin; who begrudged paradise to him and
all mankind; whose own wickedness had driven him from heaven;
who envied us that we should have eternal light which he had lost
through his arrogance when he would liken himself to God; who
also advised Cain to kill his brother. Beautiful women were born of
Cain's race; to great wickedness they turned themselves, yet was
God merciful to them; he made them lovely and beautiful, yet to
God were they not obedient. When the children of God [that is
Seth's children, as in the former selection] saw that the children of
the devil [that is of Cain] were so well formed, they offered them
their love. From their love they begot children of might, giants
they were; all evil began to increase. Then began our Lord to
repent very much that he had ever formed man after his own image;
he repented with all his heart, it pained him greatly that those
whom he had created for honor should become the possession of the
devil. Then came to him the purpose that he should, with a mighty
flood, destroy the world and in this way appease his anger.
The Middle English Genesis was written about the middle

of the thirteenth century. In the literature of the fourteenth
century the legend of Cain's descendants who were destroyed
by the flood occurs several times. It is twice mentioned in
the Cursor Mundi, though in neither case are Cain's sons

called giants. They are, however, called foes of God (1.
1593), and they made war upon him (1227). The first
passage is a brief one beginning at line 1223:
Unseli Caym hat ai was saked,
With God and man han was he hatted,
He als swa with his oxspring;
pai luved our Lauerd nankin thing,
For hai him warryd with wickud dedis;
He ham forsoke in al her nedis.
To wrik hare wikke wil hai thoght,
Agh of him na stod ham noght.
pat boght sihen wiif and barn,
With water ware hai all forfarn,
Als 3ee sal here how hit bifell
Quen I of Noe flod sal tell;
For all war ille and nan war gode,
pei drunkend all[e] in he flode.
The second and fuller account is found at line 1557, as

follows;
In Adam time was wrang inogh,
Bot his tim wex wel mare wogh,
Namlik amang Kaym kyn
pat lited ham noght bot in sin,
Al thoght )am wel hat was hair wil,
And hat was heldand al til il;
On all thinges was mare hair thoght
pan was on Drightin hat al wroght,
Swa blind hai war in pair insight
pat reckining cuth hai nan o right.
Al hair luf hai gave to lust,
pai did hair saul[i]s all to rust;
O sothfastnes, als sais te sau,
pai left pe lede of har lau,
pat es o settnes and o kind,
Withutun mensk kai ar unmind.
Al wex wik, bath an and oPer,
pe tohers wiif lai be he broPer;
pair curslneswas noght unkid,
pe lau o kind hai swa fordid.
Wimmen hai forced amang aailm,
Was nan ham moght bring to reclaim.

pe scham, he sin hat han was ute
At tel war lang to sett aboute;
pe find wend witerli with his
pat al mankind quitli war his;
Of al and al forsoth he wend
Mankind war til his wil be kend,
Swa forherli hat God ne might
Bring man into state o right,
Into be stat >at he had tint;
Bot God had opirgates mint.
Of his handwark al for to don,
Wald he noght it war swa fordon,
Forhi in forme of jugement
He thoght a new vengaunce to sent,
Hiis faas to bring al o liif
And waass hat wrang hat was sa riif;
With his grace to give ham grith
pat he suld restore mankind with.
Qhen he beheld hat foly strang
Drightun hat biden had sa lang,
pof he was wrath it was na wrang;
pis word out of his hert[e] sprang
And was be word hat he said han:
'Me reus hat ever made I man.'
Bot ilk man hat his word heris,
Wat noght al hat har to feris;
pis word was als a propheci,
pat forsaid was bi his merci,
Of he reut he si>en kydd,
Quen he to pin himselfen did
For his choslinges on rod[e]tre.
Quat was his reut han all mai see
Bi his word hat pan was said;
His merci had he ferr purveid
To haim hat wat on his parti,
For to bring ham mightili
Als his auen kyngrik til,
His wiherwins al for to spil,
Ogains wam he was sa wrath;
And be his right hand he swar ath
pat hai suld all thole schammes deid,
At sawe Pe gode, to give his red
pat all he feluns war forlorn;
pe gode allan suld be forborn,

Als it in Noe flod befell,
Quareof I sal yow silen tell.
It is evident that this account is largely extra-biblical,
and refers to those who in other places are called giants.
Either they are not so called inadvertently, or the author of
ClursorMundi connected the wicked destroyed by the flood
with the natural descendants of Cain, also wicked according
to tradition. Again the two legends may possibly have
been united, as perhaps in other places to be noted.
There is a brief allusion to the story of Cain's descendants
and the flood in Robert Manning's Chronicle,lines 200-5:
Now of be story wyl we gynne
When God took wreche of Kaymes synne.
pe erthe was waryed in his werk,
Als yn Fe Bible seys Pe clerk;
And perfore God sente a flood
And fordide al flesche and blood.'
A more extended account occurs in Piers Plowman, in

which as in the last two passages those destroyed by the flood
are not actually called giants. In other respects, however,
the story by Langland is like that which has gone before.
Allusions occur in both A and C texts,2 as follows:
Fals folk and feibles, Feoves and ly3ers,
Ben conseyvet in curset tyme, as Caym was on Eve,
After Fat Adam and Eve hedden eten of Fe appel
A3eyn Fe heste of him pat hem of nou3t made
An angel in haste Fennes hem tornde
Into Fis wrecchede world to wonen and to libben
In tene and in travaile to here lyves ende;
In Fat corsede constellacion bei knewen togedere,
And brou3ten forF a barn bat muche bale wrou3te.
Caym men cleped him, in cursed tyme engendret,
And so seiF be sauter, seo hit whon pe likeF,
Ed. of Furnivall, Rolls Series, 11. 201-206.

2
Text A, x, 135f.; EETS., 28, 117. Text C, xi, 212 f.; EETS., 54, 190.
10
concepitin dolore, et peperit iniquitatem, etc.

And alle Pat come of hat Caym Crist hem hatede aftur,
And mony milions mo of men and of wymmen
pat of Seth and his suster se]Pen fork coome;
For pei marieden to corsed men hat comen of Caymes kuynde.
For alle hat comen of hat Caym acursed hei weren,
And alle hat couplede hem to hat kun Crist hem hatede dedliche;
Forhi he sende to Seth and seide him bi an angel,
To kepe his cun from Caymes, hat hei coupled not togedere.
And sehben Seth and his suster sed weren spoused to Caymes,
A3eyn Godes heste, gurles hei geeten,
pat God was wroh with heor werk and suche wordes seide,
penitetmefecisse hominem;
And is pus muche to mene amonges 30o alle,
pat I makede man nou hit me forhinkeh;
And com to Noe anon, and bad him not lette
Swihe to schapen a schup of schides and bordes;
Himself and his sones Pre, and sehpen heore wyves,
Bringen hem to he hot and byden herinne
Til fourti dawes ben folfuld, hat he flod have iwassche
Clene awey he cursede blod hat Caym haj imaket.
Beestes hat now ben mouwen banne he tyme
pat evere hat cursede Caym com uppon eorhe.
pus horw cursede Caym com care uppon alle;

For Seth and his suster children spouseden eiher oper,
A3eyn he lawe of ur Lord ly3en togedere,
And weoren maried at mischef, as men doh now heore children.
Text C reads,
Caym he cursed creature conceyved was in synne,
After hat Adam and Eve hadden ysynyed;
Withoute repentaunce of here rechelesnesse,
A rybaud hei engendrede, and a gome unryghtful.
As an hewe hat ere] nat auntreh hym to sowe
On a leyelond, a3ens hus lordes wille,
So was Caym conceyved, and so been cursed wrecches,
That lichame han a3en he lawe hat oure Lord ordeynede.
Alle hat come of Caym caytyves were evere,
And for he synne of Caymes sed seyde God to Noe,
penitetmefecisse hominem;
And bad schape hym a schip of shides and hordes.
'Thyselve and by sones pree, and sitthen 3oure wyves,
Buske 3ow to hat bot, and abydeh berynne
vyl fourty dayes be fulfilled and he flod have wasshe

Clene away be cursede blod Pat of Caym ys spronge.
Bestes Pat now beep banne shulle, pe tyme
That evere Pat cursed Cayme cam on this erthe.'
Ac whi pe worlde was adrent, holy writ tellek,

Was for mariages of mankynde bat men maden Pat tyme.
After kat Caym Pe cursede hadde culled Abel,
Seth, Adames sone, sitthen was engendred.
And God sente to Seth, so sone he was of age,
That for no kyne catel, ne no kyne byheste
Suffren his seed seeden with Caymes seed hus broPer;
And for Pat Seth suffrede hit God seide, 'Me forkynkek
That I man made, oPere matrimonye suffrede.'
The special peculiarity of this account in Piers Plowman

is in making the evil ones who were \destroyed by the flood
the descendants of wicked sons of Cain and daughters of
Seth, another form of the legend.
Another allusion to the giants and the flood occurs in the
poem called Cleanness by the author of The Pearl. In this
place, too, just that element of the story omitted in Cursor
Mundi and Piers Plowman, the use of the name giants for
the wicked descendants of Cain who were destroyed by the
flood, is clearly given. The writer of Cleanness is empha-
sizing for a special purpose the unchastity among men which
brought the flood, and the giants are spoken of as the fruit
of evil intercourse. The peculiarity of this allusion is that
there is no direct reference to Cain, by name at least, but
there can be no doubt, in the light of medieval interpretation,
that the poet understood his de3ter of Pe dou]je as the
daughters of Seth, and the fende as the evil descendants of
the first murderer. The pertinent part of the passage, lines
269 to 292, reads as follows:
So ferly fowled her flesch Pat be fende loked
How be de3ter of be dou]e wern derelych fayre,
And fallen in fel3schyp with hem on folken wyse
And engendered on hem jeauntes with her japes ille.
pose wern men mejeles and ma3ty on urke,

pat for her lodlych laykes alosed bay were.
He was famed for fre ]at fe3t loved best,
And ay Pe bigest in bale ]e best was halden;
And penne eveles on erbe ernestly grewen,
And multyplyed monyfolde inmonges mankynde;
For ]at be ma3ty on molde so marre pise oker,
pat ke wy3e kat al wro3t ful wroply bygynnes.
When he knew uche contre corupte in hit selven,
And uch freke forloyned fro Pe ry3t wayes,
Felle temptande tene towched his hert;
As wy3e, wo hym withinne werp to hym selven:
'Me forkynkes ful much kat ever I mon made,
Bot I schal delyver and do away kat doten on kis molde,
And fleme out of Pe folde al kat flesch weres,
Fro pe burne to ke best, fro bryddes to fysches;
Al schal doun and be ded and dryven out of erke
pat ever I sette saule inne; and sore hit me rues
pat ever I made hem myself; bot if I may herafter,
I schal wayte to be war her wrenches to kepe.'
Then follows an extended account of the flood, without

further allusion to the Cain story. A very clear reference
to the giant descendants of Cain is found in Wyntoun's
Original Chronicle of Scotland. It reads,
Intill his tyme kat I of tell
Wer gyandis wakkand ferss and fell,
That like till men war in figure,
Bot bai were fere maire of stature.
One quhat wiss or quhat manere
This ilk[e] gyantis gotten were,
Sindry haldis opinioune,
I will mak na conclusioun,
Bot Sethis sonis, as Pai say,
Luffit Canys douchteris stout and gay,
And gat upon jaim bodely
Thir gyantis kat were sa forsy.
Or' sindry spretis on kare wiss
Slepand women wald suppriss
With maistry, quayntiss or with slicht,
That gat kire gyantis of gret mycht.2
1 MS.one. 2 Scottish Text Society's ed., Book I, 1. 297f.

It will be noticed that Wyntoun gives two possible

explanations of the giant births, the second referring them
to the medieval incubi, rather than to Cain. We are
interested only in the first, but the second explanation was
often used.
Still one other very clear statement of the medieval
tradition is found in the Vernon MS. of the Life of Adam
and Eve. This MS. dates from the last quarter of the
fourteenth century, but the earliest versions of the Adam and
Eve story are nearly a century earlier.
And Adam comaunded to Seth Fat non of his kuynde schulde felauschupe
wik Caymes kuynde, ne wedde non wyves in Caymes kuynde; for ]o Fat
coomen of Sethes kuynde ben cleped Godes sones, and Caymes kuynde to
men sones. And penne, at pe fiftene hundred winteres ende, heo bigunnen
to don heore lecherie priveliche, and afturward openliche; and Fo afturward
heo weddeden ]et o kuynde into Pat oPur and geeten geauns. And penne
God tok wreche, and adreynte al Pe world but eihte soules at Noe flood;
God was agrevet hereof, and seide Fat him forkhou3te Pat he hedde imaad
mon, so he nom venjaunce of hem for heore foule synne.1
To this may be added a brief yet significant quotation

from Trevisa's translation of Higden's Polychronicon:2
Petrus. Seth his children were good men anon to Fe sevenFe genera-
cioun; bot afterward men mysusede men, and women [mysusede women].
Genesis. Godes sones took men dou3teres, fat is to menynge, Seth his sones
took Caym his dou3teres and gete geantis.
Then follows an account of the incubi, based on Petrus

Comestor. The passage is explicit both as to the connection
of "sons of God" with Seth's descendants, and the
daughters of men (men dou3teres)with Cain.
To show how fully the interpretation we have noted was
retained to modern times we may cite Milton's Paradise
Lost, xi, 573 f. The passage is too long to quote, but every
detail of the earlier Christian interpretation is found. "Just
men" descended "from the high neighboring hills,"
1
Horstmann, Sammlung altenglischerLegenden (1878), p. 225.
2 Rolls Series, Book II, ch. v.
When from their tents behold

A bevy of fair women, richly gay
In gems and wanton dress; to harp they sung
Soft amorous ditties, and in dance came on.
The account then tells how the just men were seduced and
the offspring of their intercourse were
Giants of mighty bone and bold emprise (1. 642).
The result of their wickedness is the flood, as in the older

writers; see lines 664 f.
In explaining the vision to Adam, Michael says of the
tents from which the women came,
Those tents thou saw'st so pleasant were the tents
Of wickedness, wherein shall dwell his race
Who slew his brother;
and he calls the "just men,"

That sober race of men, whose lives
Religious titled them the sons of God.
The first are thus the " daughters of Cain" and the second
sons of Seth, called "sons of God" for their righteousness.
Even in minute detail there is here the same conception and
series of conceptions which we have found in the medieval
English writers.'
Whether all the references in English have been gathered
or not, enough have been quoted to show that the connection
of the giants with Cain was common medieval tradition.
The light, too, which they throw on the Beowulf passages
111 f. and 1687 f. seems to me unmistakable. Whether there
be in the latter especially any influence of Teutonic tradi-
tion, as of the runic inscription on the sword, one conclusion
1 There are two other

passages in which Milton refers to the giants of
Genesis 6. In the first (P. L. III, 463 f.) he places them in Limbo. In
the second (P. L. iv, 1. 447 f. ) he seems to have in mind the other inter-
pretation, by which the "sons of God." were angels.
seems certain. A Christian writer, or redactor of the Beo-

wulf story, such as could make allusion to Grendel's relation
to Cain, would surely understand the passages relating to the
giants and the flood as merely a part of Christian tradition.
If he added them to an original heathen story, as is usually
believed at least, he did so wholly from such Christian
sources as were used by the poet of the CsedmonianGenesis
and other English writers so far mentioned. For my part
I have no hesitancy in believing that these two passages
supplement each other, and are wholly Christian in origin.
This will be even clearer when we consider the numerous
Christian writers who used the legend.
C. The Giants and the Gods of the Heathen
It remains to mention one of the most significant

connections of the legend or group of legends concerning
Cain. Even Hebrew commentators who knew Greek
literature suggested that the giants who warred against Jove
in Greek mythology were the very giants of Genesis 6. A
hint of this belief among the Jews occurs in a passage
from Josephus to be used later; see p. 922. Referring to the
giants of Scripture he says, "they did what resembled the
acts of those whom the Greeks call giants." Christian
writers carried this idea much further. They pointed to the
Greek myth as not only confirming Scripture, but explaining
in a simple manner the whole basis of the heathen
mythologies. The giants who warred against Jove were the
giants of Scripture, who opposed God and wrought
wickedness. They and their descendants became heathen
gods, who were thus not gods at all, but wicked men or
devils. The early Fathers connected these heathen gods
with the giants of Genesis 6, so that they were thus
descendants of Cain. This was especially true of those who
accepted the Septuagint reading " angels of God," as

explained on p. 920. Even though the flood had destroyed
their bodies, their spirits were still thought of as existing.
On the other hand, when the reading " angels of God"
was given up, and the reading " sons of God " was explained
as referring to the sons of Seth, the giants of Genesis 6 could
no longer be assumed to account for the heathen gods.
They, as wholly human, had been entirely destroyed by the
deluge. The gods of the heathen were then connected with
the descendants of Ham (Cham), the post-diluvian represen-
tative of the wicked Cain. When this was done, certain
giants of times after the flood were associated especially with
Nimrod, who was made a giant by natural interpretation of
Genesis 10, 8. The war against God, too, was easily
associated with the building of the tower of Babel, by an
equally natural connection of Babel in Genesis 10, 10 and
Genesis 11, 1-9. This was not strange since Hebrew
tradition made Nimrod the builder of the tower of Babel, in
order to reach heaven and destroy God himself. Moreover,
one third of those who took part with him became devils
and evil spirits.
Still a third view of the gods of the heathen connected
them with the angels who fell with Lucifer, an explanation
familiar from Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I, 364 f. This
last interpretation, however, we need not now consider, since
the others prevailed in the middle ages.
There are frequent allusions in Old and Middle English
to the gods of the heathen as giants. Most of these refer to
Nimrod and the tower of Babel, as told by Hebrew and
Christian commentators. In one sense, therefore, they do
not belong here. Yet their close connection with the Cain
story makes it best to consider them with the Cain legends.
One of the oldest of these is an interpolation in the
Alfredian Boethius, Book III, Prose 12. In extension of
the reference to the giants of classical mythology by the

author, the English translator tells the story of their war
against Jove at some length, and then adds:
Dyllica leasunga hi worhton and meahton ease seggan sol;spell, gif him
Pa leasungen nseren swetran, and peah swine gelic 1isum. Hi meahton
seggan hwylc dysig Nefrod se gigant worhte; se Nefrod wses Chuses suna;
Chus wses Chames sunu, Cham Noes. Se Nefrod het wyrcan aennetor on
'Saemfelda WeNensar hatte, and on 'sere Ziode WeDeira hatte, swi&e neah
Paerebyrig be mon nu hset Babilonia. paethi dydon for ha Zingum, be hi
woldon witan hu heah hit weere to Zvem heofone, and hu Zicce se hefon
wsere and hu fsest, o;e hwwetpfer ofer wsere. Ac hit gebyrede, swa hit
cyn was, bset se godcunda Wald hi to stencte aerhi hit fullwyrcan moston,
and towearp Zone tor, and hiora monigne ofslog, and hiora sprsece todaelde
on tu and hund seofontig ge]ioda.
Such were the false stories they made up; and they might easily have
told true stories, and yet very like to the others, if lies had not been more
pleasing to them. They might have told what foolish Nimrod the giant
wrought; this Nimrod was son of Chus, Chus was Cham's son, Cham
Noah's. Nimrod ordered built a tower in the plain called Sennar, and
among the folk called Deira, very near to the town which men now call
Babylon. This they did for the reason that they wished to know how far
it was to heaven, and how thick heaven was and how fast, and what was
beyond it. But it fell out, as was natural, that the divine power scattered
them before they might complete it, and struck down the tower, and slew
many of them, and separated their language into two and seventy tongues.
Another passage in the Boethius is of like nature. In the
elaboration of the allusion to Ulysses and Circe, the English
translator says :2
pa wses baer Apollines dohtor, Iobes suna; se Iob was hiora cyning and
licette jaet he sceolde bion se hehsta God, and beet dysige folc him gelyfde
for ha Wehe was cynecynnes. And hi nyston naenne oSerne god on laene
timan, buton hiora cyningas hi weor]odon for godas. pa sceolde bsesIobes
faederbion eac god, baes nama wses Saturnus; and his suna swa ilce aelcne
hi haefdonfor god. pa was hiora an se Apollinus he we ser ymb sprsecon.
Then was there a daughter of Apollo, son of Jove; this Jove was their
king and had feigned that he was the highest God, and the foolish folk
'Sedgefield's Boethius, p. 99. The Latin reads, "Accepisti, inquit, in

fabulis lacessentes caelum gigantes; sed illos quoque, uti condignum fuit,
benigna fortitudo deposuit."
2Boethius, iv., Metre 3. Sedgefield, p. 115.
believed him because he was of royal race, and they knew no other god
in that time but worshiped their kings as gods. Then the father of this
Jove, whose name was Saturn, had to be a god also, and each of his sons
likewise they regarded as a god. Of these one was the Apollo we just now
mentioned.
The Old English poetical version of the Metres of Boethius

also contains a similar interpolation somewhat more extended.
After the allusion in the original to Circe as daughter of
Apollo, the English translator interpolates an explanation
regarding Apollo as follows:
Waesse Apollinus seeeles cynnes,
Iobes eafora; se wses gio cyning;
se licette litlum and miclum,
gumena gehwylcum, kset he God were
hehst and halgost. Swa se hlaford ha
osetdysige folc on gedwolan laedde,
oMset him gelyfde leoda unrim,
for;sem he wses mid rihte rices hirde
hiora cynecynnes. Cut is wide
aeeton ha tide Jeoda aeghwilc
hsefdon heora hlaford for pone hehstan God,
and weor6odon swa swa wuldres cyning
gif he to taem rice wses on rihte boren.
Waes jaes Iobes faeder god eac swa he;
Saturnus pone sundbuende
heton hsele'a bearn. Hefdon ha msegSa
aelcne aefterodrum for ecne God.
Sceolde eac wesan Apollines
dohtor diorboren dysiges folces
gumrinca gyden, cute galdra fela
drifan drycraeftas. Hio gedwolan fylgde
manna swiNost manegra kioda,
cyninges dohtor sio Circe waes
haten for herigum.1
This Apollo was of noble race, child of Jove who was formerly
king; he feigned to great and small, to every man, that he was God,
highest and holiest. So this lord led that foolish folk in deceit,
until a multitude of people believed him, because he was rightly the
ruler of the kingdom, of their royal race. It is widely known that,
Wiilker's Grein, III, ii, 46.

in that time, every people regarded their king as the highest God,
and worshiped him as the king of glory if he was rightly born to
that kingdom. The father of this Jove was a god also as he; him
the sea-dwelling children of men called Saturn. The peoples regarded
each after the other as eternal God. Also Apollo's daughter, royal
born, had to be a goddess to the foolish folk, proud men, known to
exercise magic arts through many sorceries. She, most of men, of
many peoples, followed error, daughter of a king, who was called
Circe for her oppressions.
There is a covert allusion to the same idea in Salomon

and Saturn, though this would be by no means clear but for
the preceding discussion. Salomon is speaking,
Wa biS "onne "issum modgum monnum Zam "e her nu mid mane lengest
lifia6 on Zisse laenan gesceafte; iu 1aet Sine leode gecySdon;
wunnon hy wiS Dryhtnes mihtum, forZon hy Saetweorc ne gedigdon.
Ne sceal ic Ze hwaeZre,broZor, abelgan; -u eart swi6e bittres cynnes,
eorre eormenstrynde, ne beirn Zu on &ainwitgecyndo.1
Woe, then, shall be to these proud men who here now live longest in evil
in this transitory creation; that, thy people formerly made known; they
strove against the might of the Creator, therefore they did not accomplish
that work. Yet should I not vex thee, brother; thou art come of a very
bitter race, fierce mighty generation; do not thou incur their guilty nature.
Here Salomon reminds Saturn of his connection with an evil

race which strove against God. The Christian poet, in
making the allusion, no doubt had in mind the common
medieval interpretation of the war of the giants on Jove
which connected them with the giants of Genesis, probably
with Nimrod and the tower of Babel. In that case, the
work which they did not accomplish was very likely the
tower itself, though possibly the rebellion in general.
Indirectly, also, another passage in the Metres of Boethius
is explained by a minor part of this same legend regarding
heathen gods. It must be premised that the Latin of Metre
vii, Book II, was entirely misunderstood by the translator,
and he has introduced a most surprising allusion to the
Kemble's Salomon and Saturn, ,Elfric Society, p. 164.

northern divinity Weland. The writer is discoursing upon

the transitoriness of human fame, and assumes the interroga-
tory form, asking where are various famous Romans. The
first of these interrogations, in the Latin, asks after ossa
fabricii; the bones of Fabricius. Evidently the English
translator supposed the proper name Fabricii meant "artificer,
smith," and at once thought of the great Teutonic artificer
Weland. He therefore translates, interpolating at some
length in explanation,
Hwser sint nu nseswisan Welandes ban,
]jes goldsmi;es ke wses geo mserost?
Forty ic cwse' ?seswisan Welandes ban,
forty aengum ne maeg eor6buendra
se craeftlosian, he him Crist onlsen6,
ne maegmon sefre ]y et senne wrseccan
his crseftes beniman, ]e mon oncerran maeg
sunnan onswifan and Zisne swiftan rodor
of his rihtryne, rinca senig.
Hwa wat nu kseswisan Welandes ban,
on hwelcum hi hliewa hrusan peccen ?1
Where are now the bones of the wise Weland, the goldsmith, who
was formerly famous ? For this reason I said the bones of the wise
Weland because the skill which Christ lends him may not perish
from any of the dwellers on earth; nor may one ever more easily
deprive a hapless wight of his skill, than one may turn the sun back-
wards, or any man the swift sky from its right course. Who
knows now the bones of Weland, in what mound of earth they may
be covered ?
In explanation of the passage2 it must be noted that a

Christian poet can not be supposed to have made this
extended allusion to a heathen divinity, unless from a
Christian standpoint. And just this is clearly true. For it
is well known that the early Christian Fathers regarded the
finding of large bones in the earth as full proof of the
Wiilker's Grein, III, ii, 16.

2The mistake of the translator has of course been pointed out, but with-
out explanation of the underlying conception.
existence of the very giants mentioned in Genesis. See, for

example, the passage from the Recognitions of Clement on
page 924 of this paper. Tertullian also, in his treatise On
the Resurrection, Chapter 42, says,
"These are the carcasses of the giants of the old time; it will be obvious
enough that they are not absolutely decayed, for their bony frames are still
extant. 1
It is evident, therefore, that the Christian poet, after his

error regarding the Latin, supposed he was using an effective
example of transitory fame when he referred to a giant, or
heathen god of human origin, whose bones he really thought
were buried in some unknown place. His interpolation also
implies that the skill of Weland was certainly not derived
from the Creator, and he was doubtless thinking of that
devil origin of the giants usually accepted in medieval times.
The story of Nimrod and the giants is briefly given in
AElfric's Homily on the Pentecost. The reference to the
"speaking with tongues" suggested to JElfric the tower of
Babel and the confusion of tongues:2
Hit getimode eafter Noes flode, baet entas woldon areran ane burh, and
aenne stypel swa heahne baethis hrof astige oS heofon. pa wses an gereord
on eallum mancynne, and paetweorc wses begunnen ongean Godes willan.
God eac forSi hi tostencte swa asethe forgeaf aelcumZaerawyrhtena seltcuu
gereord, and heora nan ne cute olres sprsece tocnawan.
It happened after Noah's flood that giants wished to build a city and a
tower so high that its roof should reach to heaven. Then was there one
language among all mankind, and that work was begun against the will
of God. Therefore God scattered them, so that he gave each of the work-
men a different language, and none could understand the other's speech.
A second allusion is found in the Homily on the Passion of

the Apostles Peter and Paul. Speaking of the false gods
which the heathen nations worshipped, ]Elfric says,3
1 See also
Augustine, City of God, Book xv, chap. x.
2 The Homilies of .Elfric, ed. by Thorpe, I, 318.
Ibid., I, 366.
Sume hi gelyfdon on deade entas, and him deorwurSlice anlicnyssa

arserdon, and cwsedon asethi godas wseron for lseremicelan strenc'e Wehi
heefdon; wses Zeah heora lif swi6e manfullic and bysmurfull.
Some of them believed in dead giants, and raised costly idols to them
and said that they were gods on account of the great strength which they
had; yet their lives were criminal and full of evil.
The longest passage in explanation of the heathen gods is

in the poetical homily De Falsis Diis, formerly attributed to
AElfric but excluded from his works in the last and excellent
edition of Prof. Skeat.' Only part of this homily has been
printed, for a special purpose, in Kemble's edition of Saloman
and Saturn. In this portion there is no reference to Nimrod
and the tower of Babel, but comparison with Wulfstan's
homily on the same subject, practically a paraphrase of the
former, shows a distinct allusion to the Nimrod legend.2
Following this come the lines quoted by Kemble (p. 120 f.),
some of which may be given, as follows:
Git gaaWehaegenan noldon beon gehealdene
on swa feawum godum, ac fengon to wur6igenne
mislice entas and men him to godum,
'a Wemightige wseron on woruldlicum gelinc6um,
and egefulle on life, Zeah Wehi leofodon fullice.
An man was eardingende on Sam iglande Creta
Saturnus gehaten, swy6lic and wselhreow, etc.
Das manfullan men wseron &amaerostangodas

WeZa haseenan wur6odon and worhton him to godum.
Elfric's Lives of the Saints, EETS. 76, 82, 94, 114.

2
Napier's Wulfstan, p. 104 f. The reference to Nimrod reads:
Ac syggan lset gewear'S set Nembrod and ga entas worhton tone
wundorlican stypel aefter Noes flode, and him &aswa fela gereorda gelamp,
aseshe bec secga6, swa 1sera wyrhtena wses. pa sygHan toferdon hy wide
landes and mancyn Pa sona swy6e weox, and a set nyhstan wurdon hi
bepahte, burh tone ealdan deofol he Adam ju ser beswac, swa osethi worhton
wolice and gedwollice him hsebene godas and Sone so6an God and heora
agenna scyppend forsawan, Pe hy to mannum gescop and geworhte.
Monega o're godas wseron mislice afundene,

and eac swylce gydenan' on swiSlicum wurgmynte
geond ealne middangeard, mancynne to forwyrde;
ac Wassynd Sa fyrmestan geah Wehi fullice leofodon.
Se syrwigenda deofol Se swicag embe mancynn
gebrohte &aheetenan on 'aet healice gedwyld,
asethi swa fule men him fundon to godum,
We"a leahtras lufodon Welicialt Sam deofle,
Saeeteac heora biggencgan heora bysmor lufodon,
and aelfremede wurdon fram 'am aelmihtigan Gode,
se Weleahtras onscuna6 and lufa6 ga claennysse.
Yet still the heathen would not be contented with so few gods,
but began to worship as gods various giants and men who had been
mighty in worldly dignity and terrible in life, though they had lived
foully. One man was dwelling in the island of Crete, calledSaturn,
strong and ferocious, etc. . . . These guilty men were the mightiest
gods which the heathen worshiped, and made gods for themselves.
. . . Many other gods there were, variously invented, and also such
goddesses in great honor throughout the world, for the ruin of man-
kind; but these are the foremost, though they foully lived. The
plotting devil who deceives mankind brought the heathen into this
great error, that they should set up for gods such foul men, who
loved the sins that please the devil, so that their followers loved
their shame and became estranged from almighty God, who hates
sins and loves purity.
The whole passage, which is too long to quote in full, is

noteworthy as showing how early English commentators
associated the divinities of the heathen with the giants and with
each other, classical deities being made to correspond to
those of the northern nations, as in the well-known passage
in Layamon's Brut, lines 13,897 f. In Salomon and
Saturn, also in Adrian and Ritheus, Mercury the giant is
said to be the one who first invented letters.1
Slight variations of the Nimrod legend are also found in
the Middle English Genesis,lines 696, and in Cursor ?Iundi,
lines 2195 to 2304, passages which need not be quoted here.
1In the first, the words are Mercurius se gigand, in the second Mercurius
se gigant; Kemble, Salonmonand Saturn, pp. 192, 200.
On the other hand Higden, in his Polychronicon as translated

by Trevisa, follows the statement of Isidore's Etymologia
which he quotes almost exactly. Trevisa's translation reads,
pey hat payenis clepi] goddes, bey were men; and as bey here hem in
her lif, bettre or wers, so bey were iworshipped after her dee]. Bote by
false lore of fendes men hat come afterward worschipped hem for goddis
hat were first iworschipped 'onliche for mynde; and ban, for to make it
more solempne, com feynynges of poetes.1
This is followed by a characteristic account of the Greek

divinities, quoting Augustine and others.
Dante combines the Nimrod story with that by which the
gods of the heathen are connected with Lucifer and his fallen
angels. He thus brings together Lucifer, the gods of the
heathen mythologies and Nimrod in his Purgatorio xii, 25-
36. I quote from Longfellow's translation:
I saw that one who was created noble
More than all other creatures, down from heaven
Flaming with lightnings fall upon one side.
I saw Briareus smitten by the dart
Celestial, lying on the other side,
Heavy upon the earth by mortal frost.
I saw Thymbraeus, Pallas saw, and Mars,
Still clad in armour round about their father,
Gaze at the scattered members of the giants.
I saw at foot of his great labour, Nimrod,
As if bewildered, looking at the people
Who had been proud with him in Senaar.
The question comes whether any English writer connected

heathen gods with the giant descendants of Cain. I suggest
that this is probably true in one respect of the poet of
Beowulf. It will be remembered that the hero, when so
nearly vanquished by Grendel's mother, found a sword in
the cave and with it overcame his foe. The passage at 1.
1557 reads as follows:
1 Babington's ed., Rolls Series, Book 11, ch. Ix.

LEGENDS OF CAIN. 915.
Geseah Za on searwum sige-eadig bil,

eald sweord eotenisc, ecgum kyhtig,
wigena weor;mynd; ]tet wses wsepna cyst,
buten hit wses mare tonne enig mon oler
to beadulace setberan meahte,
god ond geatlic, giganta geweorc.
The sweord is here called eald sweord eotenise 'old sword
of an eten,' and giganta geweore 'the work of giants.' The
usual interpretation of such expressions, as by Grimm in
DeutscheMythologie,associates them with Teutonic mythology.
But I submit that the poet of Beowulf, who could connect
the giants with Cain as he has done, would have the same
giants in mind in this place. The sword is found in the
house of a descendant of Cain and presumably belongs to
her. On its hilt Hrothgar finds the inscription regarding
"the beginning of that old struggle when the flood slew the
race of the giants," 1 a clear allusion to the giant posterity of
the first murderer; see p. 893. It can not be that the poet
who had so clearly in mind the medieval Cain story could
have connected the magic sword with a heathen myth, and
placed upon it an inscription of biblical origin.2
This supposition becomes a practical certainty, I believe,
when we know how fully the working in metals and the
making of swords and armor were associated with these
same giants of Genesis 6. Early apochryphal writings, as,
the Book of Enoch and the Book of Adam, and many of the
Fathers emphasized the making of weapons as one'of the
1 If
sy6manof 1. 1689 means 'after' instead of 'when,' the passage would
doubtless refer to the Nimrod story. Yet the meaning 'when' seems far
more likely, owing to the close connection of the 'struggle' with the flood.
2 This same sword is spoken of in 1. 1663 as eald sweord eacen, and pre-
sumably the same in 1. 2140 as having eacnumecgum. In both these places

it has been conjectured by Bugge (Zeitschriftf. d. Philologie, IV, 206), that
the correct reading is eotenisc and eotenum,though too much must not be
made of such a conjecture.
11
evil results of Cain's wickedness. The knowledge of magic

came from the same source. This giant sword of Beowulf,
therefore, which also had magical power since it would kill
one whom no human sword would touch, is another evidence
of the poet's acquaintance with the early Christian and
medieval extensions of the Cain story.
If these references to the sword of the cave are to the
biblical giants, rather than to Teutonic mythology, certain
other passages must also be connected with the same. The
sword of Eanmund (1. 2616) is also eald sweord etonisc, and
Wulf's sword and helm (1. 2979) are
eald sweord eotenisc, entiscne helm.
I see no reason to halt at this conclusion. It seems to
me impossible that the poet of Beowutf could have been so
thoroughly Christian as he shows himself in many places, and
make so frequent references to purely heathen conceptions.1
Perhaps one late allusion to the derivation of the arts
from Cain may be worth while as showing the long
acceptance of the idea. It is in Donne's Progress of the Soul,
stanza lii:
Wonder with me
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts whence our lives are blest
By cursed Cain's race invented be.
SOURCES.
A. Monsters and Spirits of Evil Descendedfrom Cain.
That Cain was the father of an evil progeny, monsters

and evil spirits, may be accounted for both by Hebrew
1This is not the usual

view, I know, but I have became more and more
inclined toward it. See also Klaeber, Zum Beou4lf, Anglia xxviII, especi-
ally 441 f. If no one forestalls me I hope to take up the matter somewhat
fully in a subsequent paper.
tradition and by Christian interpretation of Scripture. That

it should occur in Hebrew tradition is not strange, since
some Hebrew commentators gave a supernatural origin to
Cain himself; cf. p. 832. From this it would naturally
follow that Cain's descendants would be supernatural also.
This idea is followed by Bartolocci in a chapter on the
origin of demons:
Primus eorum parens assignatur angelus, qui pulcheritudine Evae
illectus, equitans super serpentem ad ear ingreditur, ex quo concepit
Kain, cujus figuram ut et illius posteritatis non humanum, sed angelicam
fuisse autumat, quae (Hebr) generatio diluvii a Kabbinis nominatur,
quarum animae daemones factae sint, et modo hominibus nocere aiunt, sed
in futuro saeculo, nempne tempore Messiae, annihilabit eos Deus, ne
amplius Israelitis neceant. (He refers to R. Eliezer, Pirakim, chap. 34,
p. 39).1
But Bartolocci also connects demons with Cain through
the giant progney of the murderer. The passage above is
followed immediately by these words:
Etiam generatio diluvii in die judicii non resurget, sicut dictum est,
gigantes non resurgent, Is. 26, 14. Omnes autem eorum animae factae sunt
spiritus et daemones nocentes hominibus, et in futuro saeculo Deus sanctus
benedictus perire eos faciet e mundo.
Eisenmenger also quotes Hebrew tradition in respect to

demon descendants of Cain:
Von Kain lesen wir in dem Buche Nischmath chajim S. 116, Abs. 1 in
dem 12 Kapitel: 'Weiter sagen sie (die Kabbalisten), dass von Kain
Teufel und Nachgespenster hergecommen seien, und den deswegen in dem
Gesetze (Moses) des Todes seines Samens nicht gedacht werde, wie dessen
bei den iibrigen Geschlechtern Adams Erwihnung geschicht, weil die vom
Samen Kains fiir ein besonders Geschlecht gehalten worden sind.2
But the demon descendants of Cain may also be accounted

for by Christian interpretation of Scripture. We have
already mentioned the connection assumed by early English
1Bibliotheca Rabbinica, I, 290.

2EntdecktesJudenthum
(ed. of 1893), 589.
writers between the giants of Genesis, 6 and Cain. The

descendants of these giants were demons else, so that in this
way we may account for the representation of Grendel and his
mother as being of the posterity of Cain. I quote from
Justin Martyr, Apologia, 2, 92:
Angeli autem ordinem institutum praetergressi, in stupra cum mulieribus
prolapsi sunt ac filios susceperunt eos, qui daemones appellati; atque etiam
postea genus humanum sibi in servitutem addixerunt, partim scriptis
magicis, partim terroribus et suppliciis inferendis, partim sacrificiis,
suffimentis et libaminibus edocendis; quibus rebus egere coeperunt, ex quo
cupiditatum morbis emancipati sunt; denique in humanum genus caedes,
bella, adulteria, flagitia atque omne vitiorum genus proseminarunt.1
The ClementineHomilies give a similar account:
But from this unhallowed intercourse [that of angels who cohabited with
women] spurious men sprang, much greater in stature than men, whom
they afterwards called giants; not those dragon-footed giants who waged
war against God as those blasphemous myths of the Greeks do sing, but
wild in manners and greater than men in size inasmuch as they were sprung
of angels, yet less than angels as they were born of women. .. . But they,
on account of their bastard natures not being pleased with purity of food
(the manna God has provided), longed after the taste of blood. Wherefore
they first tasted flesh .... All things therefore going from bad to worse,
on account of these brutal demons God . .. sent a deluge of water that, all
being destroyed, the purified world might be handed over to him who was
saved in the ark, in order to a second beginning of life. And thus it came
to pass.
Since, therefore, the souls of the deceased giants were greater than human
souls, . .. they, as being a new race, were called by a new name [i. e.
demons]. And to those who survived in the world a law was prescribed of
God through an angel, how they should live. For being bastards in race,
of the fire of angels and the blood of women, and therefore liable to desire
a certain race of their own, they were anticipated by a certain righteous
law. [This law, as given in chapter 19, is that the demons should not
trouble believers, but only those who do not believe. ] 2
This passage is undoubtedly based on the Book of Enoch.

In that book the part relating to the birth of evil spirits
from the giants is as follows:
1
Migne, Patr. Graec. 6, 451.
2 ClementineHomilies, 8, ch. 14-18; Ante-Nicene Fathers, 17, 142 f.
And now the giants who have been begotten from body and flesh will be
called evil spirits on earth, and their dwelling places will be upon earth.
Evil spirits proceed from their bodies; because they are created from above,
their beginning and first basis being the holy watchers, they will be evil
spirits upon the earth and will be called evil spirits.'
From Athenagoras, in the translation of the Ante-Nicene
Fathers (vol. ii, p. 24) I take the following:
These [angels whose duty it was 'to exercise providence of God over the
things created'] fell into impure love of virgins, and were subjugated by
the flesh, and became negligent and wicked in the management of the things
intrusted to them. Of these lovers of virgins, therefore were begotten those
who are called giants .... These angels then, who have fallen from
heaven and haunt the air and the earth, . . . and the souls of the giants,
which are the demons who wander about the earth, perform actions similar,
the one to the natures they have received, the other to the appetites they
have indulged.2
A similar idea is expressed by Lactantius, De Origine

Erroris, Cap. iv:
Cum ergo numerus hominum coepisset increscere, providens Deus ne
fraudibus suis diabolus, cui ab initio terrae dederat potestatem, vel
corrumperet homines, vel desperderet, quod in exordio fecerat, misit
angelos ad tutelam cultumque generis humani.... Itaque illos cum
hominibus commorantes dominator ille terrae fallacissimus consuetudine
ipsa paulatim ad vitia pellexit, et mulierum congressibus inquinavit. Tum
in coelum ob peccata, quibus se immerserant, non recepti, cecederunt in
terram. Sic eos diabolus ex angelis Dei suos fecit satellites, ac ministros.
Qui autem sunt ex his procreati, quia neque angeli, neque homines fuerunt,
sed mediam quamdam naturam gerentes, non sunt ad inferos accepti, sicut
in coelum parentes eorum. Ita duo genera daemonum facta sunt, unum
coeleste, alterum terrenum.
Perhaps it is worthy of note that some of the derivations

of the Hebrew nephalim, Greek 7y'yaz'ro, come especially
near the idea of the Beowulf poet. Davis, in Genesis and
Semitic Tradition p. 106, mentions several. It may mean
' strong, mighty,' or be allied to Hebrew naphal in the sense
Schodde's Book of Enoch, sec. II, ch. 15.

2 Plea
for the Christians, ch. 24-25.
(1) of fallen, sinful beings; or (2) of beings characterized

as falling upon others, violent; or (3) bastards, analogous
to nephel, abortion, miscarriage." The last is the exact idea
of the Beowulf untydras (1. 111).
No doubt many later medieval writings might be chosen
to illustrate this idea of evil descendants of Cain. I quote
one more modern source for the connection of Cain with
demons. Wierus, in his Pseudomonarchia Daemonorum,
makes Cain a demon ruler:
Caym magnus Praeses, formam assumens merula; at quum hominem
induit, respondet in favilla ardente, ferens in manu gladium acutissimum.
Prae caeteris sapienter argumentare facit; tribuit intellectum omnium
aquarum; de futuris optime respondet. Fuit ex ordine Angelorum.
Praesidet legionis triginta.1
B. The Giants that stroveagainst God.
We have already shown how the story of the giants in

Genesis, 6 was connected with the previouls historical
chapters, and so with Cain. This interpretation is common
to early Christian literature as we shall see. Yet different
commentators differed somewhat in details of interpretation,
and these differences may be best understood at once. I
take the clear presentation of Lenormant, in his Beginnings
of History. Commenting on the Septuagint version of
Genesis, 6, 2 and 4, which reads "angels of God" instead of
"sons of God," he adds:
All the most ancient Fathers of the Church, as St. Justin, Tatian,
Athenagoras, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian and Lactan-
tius, as well as subsequently St. Ambrose and Sulpicius Severus, reading
the Bible in the Greek and therein finding this expression, regard with
wonder the circumstances related in Genesis of the culpable unions between
lJoannis Wieri Opera Omnia (1660), p. 659. I am indebted for this

reference to John Small's note on Dunbar's Flyting, 1. 513, Scottish Text
Society, 21. Small gives a free paraphrase of the Latin which I quote.
the angels descended upon earth and the daughters of men. This is also
the interpretation adopted by Philo (De Gigantibus), Josephus and the
author of the Book of Jubilees among the Jews, as well as by the Judaeo-
Christian Theodotion. It is developed under the form of a complete and
highly poetic narrative in the Book of Enoch, one of the most remarkable
of the non-canonical Jewish apocalytic writings. According to this book,
the angels to whom God had committed the guardianship of the earth, the
Egregors or Vigilants, allowing themselves to be beguiled by the beauty of
the women, fell with them into the sin of fornication, which forever shut
them from heaven, begetting a race of giants 3000 cubits high, as well as
numerous demons. This story of the fall of Egregors is accepted and
related with further detail by Tertullian (De Cult. Femin., I, 2, Ii, 10),
Commodian (Instruct., II, Cultus Daemonum), and Lactantius (Div.
Inst., II, 14; Testam. Patriarch., 5). And this is not all; at least one
positive passage in the New Testament occurs to the Christian in support
of a like understanding of the text of Genesis. The Epistle of Jude,
which rests upon the Book of Enoch, and clearly borrows from it verses
14 and 15, speaks of the sin of the angels and compares this fornication
with the crime of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it is probable that St. Peter
alludes to the same story in his second Epistle (ii, 4).
But subsequently the Christian doctors were seized with scruples in
regard to the consequences which might follow upon the interpretation
hitherto accepted in the matter of 'sons of God.' It was supposed to con-
tradict the words of Christ, which deny sex to the angels (Mat. 22, 30).
. . . The most generally accepted interpretation, beginning with the fourth
century, supposes the "sons of God " to be the descendants of Sheth (Seth),
upon whom this title was bestowed as belonging to the chosen race which
until that period was faithful to a worship of truth, and the "daughters of
men" to be the women of the line of Qain (Cain). This view appears
for the first time in the romance of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions.
. . . The first orthodox writer who seems to have accepted it is Julius
Africanus in his Chronicon, written during the first half of the third
century. But subsequently it became the interpretation which counted for
its adherents among the orientals St. Ephrem, and the author of the Christ-
ian Book of Adam, in the Greek Church Theodoret, St. Cyril, St. John
Chrysostom, in the Latin Church St. Augustine and St. Jerome.
For our purpose it is sufficient to note that, whatever
interpretation was taken, the children of Cain were included,
and the giants were therefore descendants of Abel's murderer.
Again, the giants of Genesis 6 were connected not only with
Cain on the one side, but more directly with the flood than
is warranted by the Scripture narrative. These giants were
the ones who seduced mankind, induced them to oppose

God, and brought the flood as a punishment for their evil
deeds.
Both Hebrew and Christian commentators agree in these
interpretations. For the first we may quote Josephus, who
connects the giants and the flood. In Antiquities of the Jews,
Book I, ch. 3, we read:
For many angels of God accompanied with women begat sons that proved
unjust, and despisers of all that was good, on account of the confidence they
had in their own strength; for the tradition is that these men did what
resembled the acts of those whom the Grecians call giants. . . . Now God
loved this man [Noah] for his righteousness. Yet he not only condemned
those other men for their wickedness, but determined to destroy the whole
race of mankind and make another race that should be pure from wicked-
ness ; and cutting short their lives, and making their years not so many as
they formerly lived, but one hundred and twenty years only, he turned the
dry land into sea.
The Jewish Rabbis more explicitly mention the connection

with Cain. Eisenmenger, in Entdecktes Judenthum, quotes
Rabbi Eliezer especially:
Der Rabbi spricht: So sahen die Engel, welche von ihrem heiligen
Orte, namlich von Himmel gefallen waren, die Tochter des Kain, welche
mit blosses Scham daher gingen und ihre Augen wie Dirnen schminkten.
Sie irrten ihnen nach und nahmen Weiber von ihnen, wie (Gen. 6, 2.)
gesaget wird: Cumque coepissent homines et cet. Der Rabbi Zadok sagt:
Von denselben sind die Riesen, welche in hoher Liebesgrossen dahergehen,
gezeugt worden.
Christian commentators, whether directly influenced by
Rabbinical lore or not, follow the same interpretation. They
cited passages from the Apochrypha which were regarded as
bearing upon the subject. Thus Augustine, in his Civitas
Dei, Book xv, ch. 23, when speaking of the giants of
Genesis 6, quotes Baruch 3, 26-38:
Ibi fuerunt gigantes illi nominati, qui ab initio fuerunt staturosi, scientes
praelium. Non hos elegit Dominus, nec viam scientiae dedit illis; et
' Edition of 1893, p. 47. Cf. also Ginzberg, Die Haggada, etc., p. 75.
interierunt, quia non habuerunt sapientiam, perierunt propter inconsider-

antiam.
Augustine also mentions the Book of Enoch as quoted by

Jude in verse 14 of his Epistle.
The apochryphal Book of Wisdom was also cited by early
Christian writers for a more direct connection of Cain and
the flood. Thus Wisdom, 10, 3-4 reads:
But when the unrighteous went away from her [Wisdom] in his anger,
he perished also in the fury wherewith he murdered his brother. For
whose cause the earth being drowned with the flood, Wisdom again pre-
served it and directed the course of the righteous in a piece of wood of
small value.
We may quote among other sources the Book of Adam, III,

ch. iv:
When the children of Seth went down from the holy mountain and
dwelt with the children of Cain, and defiled themselves with their abomi-
nations, there were born unto them children that were called Garsina, who
were giants, mighty men of valor, such as no other giants were of equal
might.
Certain wise men of old wrote concerning them, and say in their sacred
books that angels came down from heaven and mingled with the daughters
of Cain, who bare unto them these giants. But those wise men err in what
they say. God forbid such a thing, that angels who are spirits should be
found committing sin with human beings. Never, that can not be....
But they were children of Seth, who were of the children of Adam, that
dwelt on the mountain high up, while they preserved their virginity, their
innocence and their glory like angels, and were then called 'angels of God.'
A selection from numerous other references to the giant

progeny of Cain may be given in approximate chronological
order. First may stand the Book of Enoch, which was so
largely followed by the Fathers (cf. the quotation from
Lenormant):
And it carne to pass, after the children of men had increased in those
days, beautiful and comely daughters were born to them. And the angels,
the sons of heaven, saw and lusted after them.... And they took unto
themselves wives, . . . and they became pregnant and brought forth great
giants whose stature was three thousand ells. These devoured all the
acquisitions of mankind till men were unable to sustain themselves. And

the giants turned themselves against mankind in order to devour them.
And they began to sin against the birds and the beasts, and against the
creeping things and the fish, and devoured their flesh among themselves
and drank the blood thereof.'
Later it is revealed to Enoch in a vision that these giants

shall be destroyed:
And the spirits of the giants, who cast themselves upon the clouds, will
be destroyed and fall, and will battle and cause destruction upon the earth
and do evil.2
The Recognitions of Clement,Book I, ch. 29, I quote from

the translation of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II, p. 163;
All things, therefore, being completed which are in heaven and in earth
and in the waters, and the human race also having multiplied, in the
eighth generation righteous men who had lived the life of angels, being
allured by the beauty of women, fell into promiscuous and illicit connec-
tions with them; and henceforth, acting in all things without discretion and
disorderly, they changed the state of human affairs and the divinely pre-
scribed order of life, so that, either by persuasion or force, they compelled
all men to sin against God their Creator. In the ninth generation are
born the giants so-called from of old, not dragon-footed as the fables of the
Greeks relate, but men of immense bodies, whose bones, of enormous size,
are still shown in some places for confirmation. But against these the
righteous providence of God brought a flood upon the world, that the earth
might be purified from their pollutions, and every place might be turned
into a sea by the destruction of the wicked.
Sulpicius Severus, in his Historia Sacra, I, ii, has a similar

account;
Qua tempestate [of Noah], cum jam humanum genus abundaret, angeli,
quibus coelum sedes erat, speciosarum forma virginum capti, illicitas
cupiditates appetierunt; ac naturae suae originisque degeneres, relictis
superioribus, quorum incolae erant, matrimoniis se mortalibus miscuerunt.
Hi paulatim mores noxios conserentes, humanam corrupere progeniem;
ex quorum coitu Gigantes editi esse dicuntur, cum diversae inter se naturae
permixtio monstra gigneret.
Lactantius, De Origine Erroris, cap. 15, has:
1 The Book
of Enoch, ed. by Schodde, p. 66-7.
2
Ibid., p. 82.
Itaque illos cum hominibus commorantes dominator ille terrae fallicissi-

mus consuetudine ipsa paulatim ad vitia pellexit, et mulierum congressibus
inquinavit.
Alcuin, Interrogationeset Responsionesin Genesin, 96:

De quibus dixit: Cum coepissenthomines multiplicari super terramet filias
procreassent. [Et iterum] videntesFilii Dei filias hominum quod essent pul-
chrae (Gen. vi, 1, 2) ? Resp. Filias hominum, progeniem Cham; et filios
Dei sobolem Seth [MS. Sem] appellare Scriptura voluit. Hi avita bene-
dictione religiosi; illae paterna maledictione impudicae [MS. illi. . .
impudici]; sed postquam filii Seth [MS. Sem] concupiscentia victi ex
filiabus Cham connubia junxerunt, ex tali conjunctione homines immenso
corpore, viribus superbi, moribus [inconditi], quos Scriptura gigantes
nominat, procreati sunt.
This last quotation is especially interesting because the

scribe of the Alcuin MS.,or Alcuin himself, has used the
name Cham instead of Cain in both places. He evidently
refers to the former, as shown by.the clause "illae paterna
maladictione impudicae," an allusion to the curse of Noah.
The MS.also has Sem instead of Seth in the second place. If
such confusion between Cain and Cham (Ham) could be
made in such a place, it is not strange that the earlier
reading of the Beowulf MS., Cames for Caines in line 107,
should have been possible. This is perhaps a better
explanation than that of Bugge (Paul and Braune's Beitrdge,
xII, 81), who cites only a Celtic parallel to the Beowulf
Cames.
The real explanation of the confusion is that Cham (Ham)
was regarded as the natural successor of Cain after the flood.
This will be clear from a passage in Tertullian's Liber De
Praescriptionibus, cap. 47 :
Sed enim illos qui seminis illos prioris instituissent, occulte et latenter, et
ignorante illa matre virtute, cum illis octo animabus in arcam mississe
etiam semen Cham [Cain Fran. Paris], quo semen malitiae non periret, sed
cum caeteris conservatum, et post cataclysmum terris redditum, exemplo
caeterorum excresceret et effunderetur, et totum orbem et impleret et
occuparet.
Finally we may quote Petrus Comestor's Historia Schol-

astica Liber Genesis, cap. xxxi, which gives the following
De causa diluvii:
Moyses dicturus de diluvio praemisit causam ejus dicens, Cumque
coepissent homines multiplicari super terram viderunt filii dei, id est Seth,
religiosi, filias hominum, id est de stirpe Cain, et victi concupiscentia
acceperunt eas uxores, et nati sunt inde gigantes. Tempore quidem quando
factum fuerit hoc utrum sub Noe, vel ante, vel multum vel parum ante,
non determinat. Josephus autem dicit quod usque ad septimam genera-
tionem boni permanserint filii Seth, post ab mala progressi sunt, recedentes
a solemnitatibus paternis, et ob hoc contra se Deum irritaverunt. Nam
multi angeli Dei, id est filii Seth, id est qui supra filii Dei, cum mulieribus
coeuntes injuriosos filios genuerunt, qui propter confidentiam fortitudinis
gigantes a Graecis dicti sunt. Methodius causam diluvii. ... Septingen-
tissimo anno secundae chiliadis filii Seth concupierunt filias Cain, et inde
orti sunt gigantes. Et incoepta tertia chiliade inundavit diluvium. Sic
ordinat Methodius. Potuit etiam esse, ut incubi daemones genuissent
gigantes, a magnitudine corporum denominatos, sic dicti a geos, quod est
terra, quia incubi vel daemones solent in nocti opprimere mulieres; sed
etiam immanitati corporuni respondebat immanitas animorum. 1
C. The Giants and the Gods of the Heathen.
The derivation of the gods of the heathen from the

descendants of Cain on the one side, or from Nimrod on the
other, seems to be connected with the two views of Genesis
6, 2 and 4. This has been already explained on p. 920.
The gods of the heathen were thus of angelic origin, or the
giant descendants of human beings. We have already
noted the passage from Josephus as representing the first
view among Hebrew commentators. The Fathers may be
illustrated by a quotation from Justin Martyr's Apologia, in
the translation of the Anti-Nicene Fathers, I. 190:
God, when he made the whole world and subjected things earthly to
man, and arranged the heavenly bodies for the increase of fruits and the
1Migne, 198, 1081. On sic ordinat MethodiusPetrus adds the note: Hane
opinionemalibi damnat Augustinus.
rotation of the seasons and appointed this divine law,-for these things
also he evidently made for man,-committed the care of men and of all
things under heaven to angels whom he appointed over them. But the
angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by the love of
women, and begot children who are those called demons; and besides,
they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly by magical
writings, and partly by fears and the punishments they occasioned, and
partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of
which things they stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful pas-
sions; and among men they sowed murders, wars, adulteries, intemperate
deeds, and all wickedness. When also the poets and mythologists, not
knowing that it was the angels and those demons who had been begotten of
them that did these things to men and women, cities and nations, which
they related, ascribed them to God himself and to those who were accounted
to be his very ofspring, and to the ofspring of those who were called his
brothers, Neptune and Pluto, and to the children again of these their
ofspring. For whatever name each of the angels has given to himself and
his children, by that name they called them.'
The Instructions of Commodianus,ch. 3, gives a similar

view. In the same translation as the Justin Martyr it reads:
When Almighty God, to beautify the nature of the world, willed that
earth should be visited by angels, when they were sent down they despised
his laws. Such was the beauty of women that it turned them aside so that,
being contaminated, they could not return to heaven. Rebels from God
they uttered words against him. Then the Highest uttered his judgment
against them, and from their seed giants are said to have been born. By
them arts were made known on the earth, and they taught the dying of
wool and everything which is done; and to them, when they died, men
erected images. But the Almighty, because they were of evil seed, did not
approve that when dead they should be brought back from death. Whence,
wandering, they now pervert bodies, and it is such as these especially that
ye this day worship and pray to as gods.
This is followed by definite references to the gods of Roman
mythology. Compare also the quotations from the Clemen-
tine Homilies and the Recognitions of Clement on pp. 918,
924. All these are based on such apochryphal writings as
the Book of Enoch. When the Septuagint reading "angels
of God" was given up for "sons of God" in Genesis 6, 2
See p. 918 for another use of part of this quotation.

and 4, a human origin was assumed for the gods of the

heathen. For example Tertullian argues for this in his
Apoligeticus adv. Gentes, as shown by the arguments of cer-
tain chapters. We may quote:
Cap. X. Progreditur jam ad crimen irreligiositatis, aitque Christianos
deorum cultum recusare, quia dii non sunt, colendi, si divinitas eorum de-
monstrari possit. Provocat itaque ad conscientiam gentilium, quae neque
non potest omnes illos deos homines olim fuisse, quod jam unius Saturni
exemplo liquido demonstrat.
Cap. XI. At cum post mortem homines ob meritorum praesentiam in
deos adlecti dicentur, inquirit hoc capite in causas quae hoc exegerint.
Augustine discusses the matter in a similar way in his

City of God, especially Book vi, though the passage is too
long to quote. Perhaps the clearest statement is in the
Etymologia of Isadore, a work that was so influential during
the middle ages. In Book VIII, cap. xi, De Diis Gentium,
we have the following;
Quos pagani deos asserunt, homines olim fuisse produntur, et pro unius-
cujusque vita vel meritis, coli apud suos post mortem coeperunt, ut apud
AEgyptum Isis, apud Cretam Jovis, apud Mauros Juba, apud Latinus
Faunus, apud Romanos Quirinus. . . . Fuerunt etiam et quidam viri
fortes, aut urbium conditores, quibus mortuis, homines qui eos dilexerunt
similacra finxerunt, ut haberent aliquod ex imaginum contemplatione sola-
tium, sed paulatim hunc errorem, persuadentibus daemonibus, ita in pos-
teris constat irrepsisse, ut quod illi pro sola nominis memoria honoraverunt
successores deos existimaverunt, atque colerent.
These mighty men, who became gods of the heathen, were

often referred to as giants and were given characteristics
which connect them with the descendants of Cain. For
example, they were builders of cities and mighty works, as
fortifications. This building of cities was regarded as
especially reprehensible. Augustine emphasizes in his City
of God that the only proper view of life in this world is as
transitory to a life hereafter. The building of cities for
permanent abiding was therefore a work of the devil.
While they were still conceived of as giants, heathen gods
were also connected more directly with Ham, who was

thought to be the first idolator and at least a spiritual
descendant of Cain after the flood. These post-diluvian
giants were also associated especially with Nimrod, who was
made a giant by natural interpretation of Genesis 10, 8, and
with the tower of Babel by an equally natural connection of
Babel in Genesis 10, 10 and Genesis 11, 1-9; compare
p. 906. Without trying to elucidate this legend further, it
may be pointed out that Hebrew tradition made Nimrod the
builder of the tower of Babel in order to get into heaven
and destroy God himself. Moreover, one-third of those who
took part with him, those who said "we will climb from it
into heaven and strike him [God] down with axes," became
devils and evil spirits; see Eisenmenger, Entdecktes
Judenthum, p. 509 (ed. of 1893).
That the knowledge of weapons and forging in metals are
also connected with Cain's descendants is first of all Scrip-
ture itself; cf. Genesis, 4, 22 on Tubal-Cain. This idea was
much extended in medieval works. Tubal-Cain was re-
garded as a giant, and was thus associated with the giants of
Genesis 6. That the knowledge of working in metals came
first to these monsters may be shown from the Book of Enoch:
And Azazel taught mankind to make swords and knives and shields and
coats of mail.1
With this compare the first working of metals by the

the devils in hell, Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I. On
the other hand, those who associated the gods of the heathen
with men made them wicked men who invented instruments
of war. Compare Augustine's City of God.
OLIVER F. EMERSON.
1Translation of Schodde, ch. 8.

CAIN Legends of Cain Emerson Oliver F.

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CAIN Legends of Cain Emerson Oliver F.

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

CAIN Legends of Cain Emerson Oliver F.

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.jstor.org/participate-­‐jstor/individuals/early-­‐

An examination, some time since, of scattered notes on

not directly alluded to in English may be im ortant in

The biblical account of Cain as the son of Adam and

was doubtless felt to be too much at variance with Scripture,

Caym Adamess sune toc nib 3senAbsel hiss bro>err,

Perhaps there is also a suggestion of it in one of the Scottish

The above passage at least emphasizes the evil nature of

Even when commanded by an angel to live together, they

The idea is more elaborated in Piers Plowman, allusion

1Holt's ed., 11. 14456 f.

Fals folk and feiPles, theoves and ly3ers,

To these may be added one late allusion. Whether Byron

My boy, thou speakest as I spoke, in sin,

The period of transgression following the fall was con-

Eve to leave her place of penance, pretending that he and

That Cain was a son of the devil is directly stated in

The general character of these legends may be gathered

1 So referred in Jewish Eneyclopcedia,article Cain; Ginzberg, Die Haggada

Such a belief, so baldly stated at least, does not seem to

On this a note in Migne (12, 1115-6) reads as follows:

In a similar way comment on John 8, 44 makes Cain a

son of the devil, as in Quaestiones ex Novo Testamento of

The birth of Cain was, therefore, especially associated with

'Appendix to vol. iiI of Augustine, Migne, 35, 2282.

II. THE SACRIFICE.

Legendary allusions to the sacrifice of Cain and Abel are

In the Towneley play of the Killing of Abel Cain says of

In the Cornish mystery of the Beginning of the World

The Middle High German Genesis is more explicit as to

The character of Cain's offering is also implied in the Life

and in the prose of the Vernon MS.,

The reference to " thystlys and brerys" in the Townely

It is not improbable that this reference in the Cornish play

To this may be added the lines in Paradiso, ii, 51 f.,

But tell me what the dusky spots may be

The difficulty in connecting this moon legend of Cain

The earliest allusion in an English work is in a song first

For doute leste he valle he shoddreb and shere>.

Next in order of time, as bearing upon the legend, is an

The fifteenth century furnishes at least two allusions to

The second is in Henryson's Testamentof Creseid, in which

Her gyte was gray and full of spottes blake,

Upon these various references follow chronologically those

To these must be added that in Tempest,II, ii, 141:

There is besides a brief allusion in Dekker's Landthorne and

Ben Jonson agrees with Shakespeare in mentioning both

L1. 260-264, as given in the reprint of Thynne's Chaucer.

It will be seen that none of these passages makes mention

If now "wander thorough shades of night" be assumed to

a possibility of another, as we shall show later; see p. 871.

These lines must be regarded, I think, as clinching the argument above in

Various explanations were given as to why the Lord " had

More commonly Cain's offering was connected with the

The prose version is equally explicit:

In the Towneley play of the Killing of Abel this idea of

IEETS. 57, 11. 1065-6.

plowing, complaining of his horse and wrangling with his

Finally Cain gives way to Abel's importunity and begins to

Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.jstor.org/participate-‐jstor/individuals/early-‐