Britain has, he explains, Theodore and Hadrian. Aldhelm wrote sermons in verse,
and a treatise in verse for a convent of nuns, on Virginity. He also wrote an epistle to
his godson, King Aldfrith of Northumbria, on metrics, which is full of riddles and
word games. Even if Aldfrith and the nuns may not have appreciated Aldhelm’s style,
it is clear that 7th-century England was not unlettered.
Aldhelm implies that Ireland was richer in learning. Irish monks, following
Columba, had converted parts of Scotland and northern England, and an Irish
poem, ‘Pangur Ban’, gives us the best picture of the life of a monk-scribe, the key
literary figure of this age. The anonymous scholar-monk has a little white cat called
Pangur.The text, ofc.800, is found in a manuscript in the monastery of Reichenau
on Lake Constance. A translation which reproduces the off-beat rhyming of the
original was made by Frank O’Connor.
More care was taken to preserve writings in Latin than in English. Bede’s Latin
works survive in many copies: thirty-six complete manuscripts of his prose Life of St
Cuthbert, over one hundred of his De Natura Rerum. At the end of his Historia
Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum Bede lists his ninety Latin works. Of his English writ-
ings in prose and in verse, only five lines remain. As Ascension Day approached in
735, Bede was dictating a translation of the Gospel of St John into English, and he
finished it on the day he died. Even this precious text is lost. On his deathbed, Bede
sang the verse of St Paul (Hebrews 10:31) that tells of the fearfulness of falling into
the hands of the living God. He then composed and sang his ‘Death Song’. This is a
Northumbrian version:
Fore thaem neidfaerae naenig uuirthit
thoncsnotturra, than him tharf sie
to ymbhycggannae aer his hiniongae
hwaet his gastae godaes aeththae yflaes
ae fter deothdaege doemid uueorthae.
Literally: Before that inevitable journey no one becomes wiser in thought than he needs
to be, in considering, before his departure, what will be adjudged to his soul, of good or
evil, after his death-day.The ‘Death Song’ is one of the rare vernacular poems extant in several copies. Its
laco nic formulation is characteristic of Anglo-Saxon.
Bede is one of the five early English poets whose names are known: Aldhelm,
Bede, Cædmon, Alfred – two saints, a cowman and a king – and Cynewulf, who
signed his poems but is otherwise unknown. Oral composition was not meant to be
written. A poem was a social act, like telling a story today, not a thing which
belonged to its performer. For a Saxon to write down his vernacular poems would
be like having personal anecdotes privately printed, whereas to write Latin was to
participate in the lasting conversation of learned Europe. Bede’s works survive in
manuscripts across Europe and as far as Russia. The modern way of dating years AD- Anno Domini, ‘the Year of Our Lord’ – was established, if not devised, by Bede.
Bede employed this system in his History, instead of dating by the regnal years pecu-
liar to each English kingdom as was the custom at the time. His example led to its
general adoption. Bede is the only English writer mentioned by Dante, and the first
whose works have been read in every generation since they were written. The next
English writer of whom this is true is Chaucer.
English literature is literature in English; all that is discussed here of Bede’s Latin
History is its account of Cædmon. But we can learn something about literature from
20 1 · OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE: TO 1100