Caedmon used that vocabulary to translate characteristics of divinity and nature that Hild recounted to him from the Bible, at that time written in Latin. Much of the vocabulary and imagery would have been familiar to Anglo-Saxon pagans. The standard edition is found in Krapp & Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (Columbia University Press, 1936), volume 6.Ĭaedmon's Hymn is longer than it looks. The poem begins, "Nu sculon herigean heofenrices Weard." A poet was not someone who invented ideas, but someone who shaped language. She told Caedmon what to sing, and Caedmon turned it into Old English poetry. Audrey) was friends with Hild, Abbess of the double monastery (men and women) at Whitby. An account of the hymn appears in Book 4 of Bede's HE, just after a hymn to Queen Aethelthryth. Hypertext Old English-English edition, Stuart Leeĭaniel O'Donnell, Caedmon's Hymn: A Multimedia StudyĬ aedmon's Hymn is a poem found in the margins of Latin manuscripts of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People). Text of Caedmon's Hymn in English, OE, Latin
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