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“CÆDMON’S HYMN” CÆDMON (seventh
century) Generally considered the oldest poem
written in English, “Cædmon’s Hymn” is found in
some 17 manuscripts dating from as early as the eighth
century, which is remarkable for an Anglo-Saxon
poem. “Cædmon’s Hymn” owes its relative popularity
to its parent work: the poem is reproduced as part of
the Venerable Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglo-
rum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 731).
Bede’s work—and the poem itself—was written origi-
nally in Latin; however, the Old English poem is writ-
ten outside the lined margins of the Latin text and in a
smaller hand.
Bede tells the full story of the origins of “Cædmon’s
Hymn” in his Historia (4.24), dating the events to approx-
imately 680. Cædmon, a cowherd serving the abbey of
Whitby in Northumbria, was at a feast as a harp was
passed from guest to guest, each reciting a poem when
the harp came his way. Before the harp reached him,
Cædmon, afraid to sing, left and returned to his shed.
There he slept and dreamed of a heavenly visitor who
prompted him to sing of the biblical Creation story. He
returned and sang, and when the others heard Cædmon’s
song, they took him to the abbess, who welcomed Cæd-
mon into the abbey. There he continued to compose bib-
lical poetry. Some scholars thus assign other poems to
him, or at least to a “school of Cædmon.”
In addition to its antiquity, the poem is remarkable
for bringing together two different traditions: It expresses
Judeo-Christian content in a Germanic poetic form. The

poem is not only written in Germanic verse (four-beat

lines marked by ALLITERATION) but in a Germanic style,

with multiple names for God: metod (creator), dryhten

(lord, with martial overtones), scieppend (shaper), and

frea (lord). Other appositives for God are more poeti-

cally expressed as KENNINGs; God is heofon-rices weard

(“the keeper of the heavenly kingdom”), wuldor-fæder

(“the glorious father”), and mann-cynnes weard (“the

keeper of humankind”). Such variation of expression

refl ects the multiple perspectives the Germanic Anglo-

Saxons had on the Christian God, and thereby offers

signifi cant insight into the reception and acceptance of

Christianity among the newly converted Anglo-Saxons.

See also ANGLO-SAXON POETRY.

FURTHER READING

Bede. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Edited

by Bertram Colgrave and R. B. Mynors. Oxford: Claren-

don Press, 1969.

“Cædmon’s Hymn.” In Eight Old English Poems, 3rd ed.,

edited by R. D. Fulk and John C. Pope, 3–4, 49–58. New

York: Norton, 2001.

Scragg, Donald C. “The Nature of Old English Verse.” In

The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, edited

by Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, 55–70. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Alexander M. Bruce

CAELICA SIR FULKE GREVILLE, BARON BROOKE

(1576–1628) Caelica (“heavenly one”) is frequently

described as a SONNET SEQUENCE. However, although

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