The Whale is one of three poems in the Exeter Book, an important collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry from the 10^th century, with a subject from the Physiologus. The Physiologus (from Ancient Greek Ὁ Φυσιολόγος “The Naturalist”) is an ancient treaty of natural history written in Greek in Alexandria by an unknown Christian author, in which he briefly describes a variety of real or imaginary creatures and their special behaviour, and then elaborates for each of them a moral allegory. It is a forerunner and one of the main sources of mediæval bestiaries. Its date is a difficult and much debated issue: many scholars ascribe it to the 2^nd century A.D. but some others put forward a later date in the 3^rd or the 4^th century. The Physiologus became immensely popular and was translated in ancient times into Old Armenian, Syriac, Geʻez (the classical language of Ethiopia) and Latin. Its influence endured during the entire Middle Ages (notably in symbolism) and widened with later translations into Arabic, Georgian, and many European languages (often from the Latin version). The three poems of the Exeter Book are most likely the surviving remnants of an Old English version.

The whale that the poem allegorically relates to the Devil is actually a legendary sea monster known under the Greek name Aspidochelone (ἀσπιδοχελώνη), which is a compound word literally meaning “asp turtle” or “shield turtle”, the ambiguity being due to the double meaning of its first element ἀσπίς. Fastitocalon must be a corruption of it with a fancy F, which seems to have been added initially mostly to provide the poet with the correct alliteration required by the Old English meter where the name appears. This poet remains unknown, although the name of Cynewulf has sometimes been brought up in the past based upon stylistic considerations.

J. R. R. Tolkien drew from it the inspiration of his own poem Fastitocalon included in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. He uses the same imagery; however, since the poem is supposed to belong to the Hobbit tradition, the Christian allegory is naturally lacking and the tone is considerably lighter.

We have used Abert S. Cook’s edition and prose translation, with macrons replaced by acute to mark long vowels and diphthongs. A missing gap in the original text is shown by a series of dots.

The text’s transcription emulates the Insular script, a style of the Latin alphabet of Irish origin, used in most Old English manuscripts. We made use of Peter S. Baker’s typeface Beowulf1.