Caedmon, according to the Venerable BEDE, is the
author of the first Christian poetry in English. In
his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), Bede tells the
story of Caedmon’s inspiration, which includes a
nine-line poem known as “Caedmon’s Hymn.” The
OLD ENGLISH version of this poem survives in an
English translation of Bede, and demonstrates
Caedmon’s adaptation of the form and structure
of Old English ALLITERATIVE POETRY to a new Christian subject matter. While early scholars enthusiastically attributed a number of religious poems to
Caedmon, including several in the JUNIUS MANUSCRIPT, serious modern scholarship doubts any of
these attributions except for the nine lines of
Caedmon’s original hymn.
In Book IV, chapter 24 of his Ecclesia, Bede says
that Caedmon, employed as a laborer at the
monastery of Whitby, was at a feast one night
while a harp was being passed from person to person, and the guests were sharing songs. Since
Caedmon knew nothing about poetry, he left the
party and went out to the stable to tend the cattle.
Bede reports that as Caedmon slept, a heavenly figure appeared to him in a vision and told him to
sing. When Caedmon complained that he had left
the feast because he couldn’t sing, the heavenly visitor told him to sing a song of Creation. Caedmon
responded with what is known as Caedmon’s
Hymn. It begins
Nu sculon herigean heofan-rices weard,
Meotodes meahte and his
mod-geloanc,
That is, “now we must praise the kingdom of
heaven’s warden, the Creator’s might, and the
thoughts of his mind.” A glance at the style of the
verse quickly reveals the use of the same style and
meter common to Germanic heroic poetry. Each
line of Caedmon’s Hymn contains two half-lines, or
hemistiches. Each half-line contains two stressed
syllables. The hemistiches are linked by alliteration: The first stressed syllable of the second halfline determines the alliteration for the line; that
syllable alliterates either with the first, the second,
or both stressed syllables of the first half-line. The
lines contain a series of parallel attributes, as is
common in all Anglo-Saxon poetry—here, only
two parallel concepts are listed: heofan-rices weard
and Meotodes meahte. Yet it is clear that Caedmon
has followed a typical pattern of Germanic epic or
heroic poetry, but substituted the subject matter of
Latin Christianity.
Bede’s story continues as Caedmon visits the
abbess and a group of learned monks the following
morning, and they agree that Caedmon has received a divine gift. The abbess convinces Caedmon to enter the monastery, and he devotes the
rest of his life to composing Christian verse in the
Germanic style. In the end, Bede describes Caedmon’s saintly passing.
Bibliography
Fry, Donald K. “The Memory of Caedmon.” In Oral
Traditional Literature: A Festschift for Albert Bates
Lord, 282–293, Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1981.
Hieatt, Constance B. “Caedmon in Context: Transforming the Formula,” JEGP 84 (1985): 485–497.
O’Keefe, Katherine O’Brien. “Orality and the Developing Text of Caedmon’s Text,” Speculum 62
(1987): 1–20.