opens his mouth to release a sweet, honey-like odor that gives comfort to his servant to breathe. Guthlac tells the servant that it is now time to carry the message of his passing to his sister. Then Guthlac dies, with angels carrying his soul to heaven. The servant travels quickly to Pega by ship, dutifully and broken-heartedly obeying his master's last wish. The poem ends there, with the servant conveying the extent of his suffering at the loss. Sources Early editors posited that one or both of the poems could have been composed by the poet Cynewulf, but neither poem is numbered among that writer's compositions today. Guthlac B is certainly based primarily on Felix's Latin life of St. Guthlac, the Vita Sancti Guthlaci, written sometime between 730 and 740. The relationship between Guthlac A and the Vita Sancti Guthlaci is, however, less clear. Some recent scholarship concludes that the Old English poem is based directly on the Latin, but other work finds a more complex relationship. An Old English version of the life can be found among the Vercelli Homilies, and a text like this may have been the source for at least some of Guthlac A. References Abou-El-Haj, Barbara. The Medieval Cult of Saints. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. Albertson, Clinton. Anglo-Saxon Saints and Heroes. Bronx: Fordham UP, 1967. Brown, Phyllis R. "Guthlac A and B." Medieval England: An Encyclopedia. 1998. Kennedy, Charles W. Guthlac. Cambridge: In Parentheses Pub., 2000. Robison, Elaine Golden. "Guthlac, St." Dictionary of the Middle Ages. 1985. Editions and translations Bradley, S. A. J. Anglo-Saxon Poetry: an Anthology of Old English Poems in Prose Translation. London: Everyman, 1982. (tr.) Kennedy, Charles W. The Poems of Cynewulf, Translated into English. London: Routledge & Sons; New York: Dutton & Co.: 1910. 264–305. (tr.) Krapp, George Philip and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie, ed. The Exeter Book. New York: Columbia UP, 1936. (ed.) Muir, Bernard J. The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry. Exeter: U of Exeter P, 1994. 2 vol. (ed.) Roberts, Jane. The Guthlac Poems of the Exeter Book. Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford UP, 1979. (ed.) External links Guthlac A. Modern English translation by Aaron Hostetter. Guthlac B. Modern English translation by Aaron Hostetter. Old English poems