Bodleian: Cædmon's Hymn

Our first foray into the special medieval holdings of the Bodleian Library is Cædmon's Hymn.

Bede wrote that Cædmon was an illiterate man in the late 7th century who cared for the cows at what is now Whitby Abbey. One night, in a dream, he was approached by "someone" who asked him to sing about the beginning of the world. In the dream he first refused, then did create a poem.

When he woke up the next morning, he wrote down the remembered poem. Taking it to Abbess Hilda of Whitby (658–80), it was declared a gift from God. They gave him a test to make a new poem, which he did so well that they had him join the abbey and take monastic vows. They taught him history and citrine, after which he would compose beautiful poems. (This was all in Anglo-Saxon.)

Cædmon's Hymn is considered the oldest surviving English poem, and one of the oldest surviving samples of Germanic alliterative verse. It is also the second most numerous of surviving manuscripts; there are 22.

The Bodleian Library has four manuscripts. One is from the first half of the 10th century, two from the mid-11th century, and one from the first quarter of the 12th century. (The illustration is Hatton 43, from the mid-11th.) Below is one translation (made in 2011 by American poet Harvey Shapiro):

Guardian of heaven whom we come to praise
who mapped creation in His thought's sinews
Glory-Father who worked out each wonder
began with broad earth a gift for His children
first roofed it with heaven the Holy Shaper
established it forever as in the beginning
called it middle kingdom fenced it with angels
created a habitation for man to praise His splendor

Tomorrow we will look at the Book of Glendalough, from pre-Norman Ireland.