A Very Short Commentary on the Hymn in The Story of Cædmon
“卡德蒙的故事”中的圣歌有多个版本。在圣彼得堡的手稿为拉丁文，其中The Story of Cædmon被译为古英语写在页边作为注释。在此之后亦有阿尔弗雷德大帝进行大规模译介时翻译过来的版本，牛津Bodleian图书馆所收本即属于此类，亦是本文引用版本。欢迎拍砖。
Nu sculon herigean heofonrices Weard,
Meotodes meahte ond his modgeþanc,
30 weorc Wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece Drihten, or onstealde.
He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig Scyppend;
þā middanġeard monncynnes Weard,
35 ece Drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, Frea ælmihtig.
(Treharne, Elaine, editor. Old and Middle English c.890-c.1400: an anthology. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.)
“Cædmon’s Hymn” is a crucial part of “The Life of Cædmon”, which is contained in the Old English translation of Bede’s work Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of English People). Written in the 8th century, this work has become one of the most important references of Anglo-Saxon history and gained Bede the title “The Father of English History”. Although some parts of this work is not considered to be facts or truth, Historia contains a wide range of materials, which records and identifies some forgotten literary works, such as one of the earliest examples of Old English poetry as we presented above.
The singer or composer of this hymn, Cædmon, was once a man living a secular life and totally not good at singing or poetry. However, with the order and help of someone (“sum mon”, I. 21) in his dream, he acquires the unique ability of converting what he learns into songs after his unhappy experience of being forced to sing in a party. This hymn is what he once sang out unconsciously in his dream.
Beginning with a call without a subject, which is a common feature of poetry works, Cædmon asks every of his addressee or audience to praise God together with him. He chooses to delineate the very beginning of the world and God’s creating process. The process is chronologically ordered with the help of three adverb ǣrest…þā…æfter (“firstly…then…afterwards”, II. 32a-35b), and is vertically constructed from the highest heofon (“heaven”, I. 33), to middanġeard (“middle-earth”, I. 34) in the middle and finally to foldan (“earth”, I. 36).
Additionally, this arrangement becomes the basic pattern of the whole universe, which inevitably shows a sense of hierarchy. By usages of dative expressions (e.g. “bearnum”, “firum”), every part of the whole creation mentioned in this hymn is provided by God for men, instead of belonging to men, which attributes all the glories to almighty God and places mankind in the position of recipients as Cædmon himself does in his dream. Nevertheless, human beings have a close link with God not only by receiving His gift but by corresponding to God. The words referring to God keep changing thought out the hymn, such as Weard (guard), Wuldorfæder (Father of glory), Drihten (Lord), Scyppend (Creator) and Frea (Lord), and so do these of human. These appositions function as interaction between God and man in the rigid process of creating and also provide a lot of variations on phonetic level.
Alliteration is another important feature of this Old English text. With four stressed syllables per line, two to three of which alliterate (e.g. “weorc Wuldorfæder, swā hē wundra gehwæs”, I. 30), this hymn creates a clear phonetic repetition of four consonants (/h/, /m/, /w/ and /f/) and two vowels (/e/, /o/, and /æ/). Seven variations imply the seven days of creation and form a holistic world from a Christian perspective. When the hymn begins to describe God’s creating process in detail, the length of every line becomes relatively short (more than five words), but the alliteration becomes clearer and stronger with the usage of fricatives, such as /h/ and /f/. In this way, God’s concept (modgeþanc, I. 29) turns out to be determined and awesome.
除以上几点，还有一些有趣的地方，限于时间（英语水平），没有继续写下去。
1、“(þæt is sēo ǣreste Moyses booc)“在文中以括号的形式点明Cædmon当时获得的歌谣是用Moyses唱的；
2、Englishness；
3、ondswaredon ond cwǣdon，answer和say不一样，或者就是这个动作重复；
4、iċ eom （i am）；
5、利用英雄体（heroic verse）来赞颂基督教上帝“从这里开始”，显然关于诗歌形式韵律的评论肯定不是我自己说的，具体在哪看到的忘了；
6、middingard/ middangeard，关于这个“中土”，有本书很有趣，
7、有个视频合集https://youtu.be/XnHs8ah7YQs；
8、厉害的网站在豆列里。
下面是老师对大家的总体评论。
Written Assignment
Explication of Cædmon’s Hymn
The successful assignment will include around 50% of the following aspects:
A. Context
- source: the venerable Bede/Beda venerabilis, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (731)
- Bede demonstrates God’s activities in Britain
- he introduces the poet Cædmon, an originally unlearned/secular cowherd, who was attached to the monastery in Whitby after he miraculously received the gift of poetry
- as God ærest sceōp (‘first created’ [5]), Cædmon becomes the first (known) “maker” (scōp, cf. Gk poeta ‘maker’)
B. Content
- the hymn calls for praise of God as creator
- it makes a distinct reference to a “new” beginning: Nū (1)
- two-fold division: heaven (1-4), earth (5-9) > cf. Genesis 1,1
- it employs metaphors from rulership (heofonrīc [1], weard [1, 7], drihten [4, 8]), mostly paternal kinship (fæder [3], bearnum [4]), and (protective) architecture (meotod ‘measurer’ [2], hrōf, ‘roof’ [6]) – cf. biblical book Wisdom 11:21: “You have created everything according to number, measure, and weight.”
- God is “praiseworthy” as guardian (weard mentioned twice [1 and 7]), meticulous and mindful creator, a worker of miracles, and eternal (timeless) lord (ece drihten mentioned twice [4 and 8])
- protection (guardianship, roof) and guidance (lord, almighty) combine in the father-imagery
- God, and hence the creation process, are very masculine events (hē [5] is a wuldorfæder [3])
C. Form
- regardless of the complications that arise from the transmission of the hymn in Latin and/or its “marginalized” existence (i.e. in the margins of manuscript texts) in Old English, the hymn shows alliteration as its predominant formal feature, i.e. …
- … a Germanic metre is used to express (according to Bede: for the first time) a Christian-religious theme (familiar form employed to new topic)
- across altogether 9 lines, …
- … God is referred to by different epithets, of which …
- … one may count 9 = 3 times 3, and …
- … he is said to have done 3 things (verbs in past tense: onstealde [4], sceōp [5], tēode [8] – all in the sense ‘to create, make’), all of which …
- … may allude to God’s Trinitarian existence according to Christian doctrine
