Old English: “Caedmon’s Hymn”

Would you believe that “Old English,” rather than indicating the fanciful thees and thous and wherefores of Romeo and Juliet’s world, actually refers to a language so archaic that it is quite unrecognizable to the modern English ear? Take a look at this Old English poem, “Caedmon’s Hymn”:

Nu sculon herigean heofonrices Weard

Meotodes meahte and his modgepanc,

weorc Wuldor-Fæder, swa he wundra gehwæs

ece Drihten or onstealde

He ærest sceop ielda bearnum

Heofon to hrofe halig Scyppend

ða middangeard moncynnes Weard,

ece Drihten æfter teode

firum foldan Frea ælmihtig.

Perhaps there are a few words in these lines that one might be able to work out as similar to those in modern English (e.g., Fæder, æfter, ælmihtig), but for the most part it’s quite different, and its evolution presents a fascinating history.

The Rise of English

Tracing its roots several millennia in the past, Old English (and subsequently modern English) developed from an ancient common language of continental Europe called Indo-European, which began to dissolve around 2000 BCE. Rather than disappearing, however, this ancient language metamorphosized into several diverse branches: Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Hellenic, and Indian from which eventually arose Gaelic, Latin, German, Greek, and Hindi, among others. English grew out of the Germanic branch.

While Celtic was the first Indo-European branch spoken in the land we now call England, Germanic tribes, namely the Jutes, Angles and Saxons, began to invade Celtic settlements in 449 CE, leading to the eventual defeat of the Celts and the forced-adoption of Germanic languages. Over time, these languages developed into several Anglo-Saxon dialects, spoken in various tribal kingdoms throughout the region. In the 9th century CE, Viking invaders conquered nearly every Anglo-Saxon kingdom except for one. The kingdom of Wessex, under the rulership of Alfred the Great, defeated the Vikings and maintained its independence. As a result of their success, the rulers of Wessex eventually spearheaded the unification of all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and the Wessex dialect became the standard language spoken throughout the land. This dialect is what we now identify as Old English, the language of “Caedmon’s Hymn.”

Caedmon and Old English Poetics

Caedmon and Bede depicted in stained glass.

To offer some context on this poem, Caedmon was a poet who lived during the 7th century CE. He is the earliest named English poet, meaning that based on current historical documentation, he is the oldest English poet that historians are able to confidently identify and associate with his work. There exist older texts, but the authors are unfortunately unidentifiable and referred to as either unknown, or after the name of their associated text (as in the case of the famous epic poem, Beowulf, by the author scholars call the “Beowulf Poet”). This absence is, in part, a result of the oral tradition of Old English poetry, which was primarily communicated through speech or song during this period in England’s history and rarely written down.

Interestingly, Caedmon’s poetry and existence would have been lost to history as well had it not been for the 8th century historian, Bede, who chronicled Caedmon’s achievements and preserved this one and only poem from his collections. It is a religious poem, a song of praise to the Christian God who had recently been introduced to the Anglo-Saxon tribes in England, and in translation it reads:

Now let us praise Heaven-Kingdom's guardian,

the Maker's might and his mind's thoughts,

the work of the glory-father—of every wonder,

eternal Lord. He established a beginning.

He first shaped for men's sons

Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator;

then middle-earth mankind's guardian,

eternal Lord, afterwards prepared

the earth for men, the Lord almighty.

( Translation by Roy Liuzza; accessed through the Poetry Foundation.)

Looking back at the Old English translation above, notice the spacing in the middle of each line. This is a common trait of Old English poetry, a deliberate move used to create rhythm in a poetic form that did not use a typical syllabic meter. Old English poetic meter was stress-based and most closely resembles trochaic tetrameter, with the stress falling on the first part of the words and the lines generally consisting of four metrical feet (although syllables were not the focus).

The stressed words in each group present an alliteration, which was another important poetic device. The alliteration pattern in Old English poetry is based on the third stressed sound and projects backward to the sounds in the first group (e.g., “Meotodes meahte and his modgepanc”). Kennings, or compound words, are also prominent throughout, as well as appositives, or adjacent nouns, making for very noun-heavy poetry.

Old English Grammar and Stress Shift

Another interesting aspect of Old English is its grammar, which is wildly more complex than that of today’s modern English. Where modern English has no genders and only three cases (subjective, objective, possessive), Old English had three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental), along with innumerous word-endings to reflect those grammatical features.

Around 500 CE, Old English endured what scholars call a “stress shift” where the speakers of the language began to place stress on the first syllable of many words rather than on the last. Eventually, without stress on the ends of the words, the many word endings began to fall off in speech entirely. “Sunnum” in Old English eventually became “sun,” and “mōnum” eventually became “moon.” And over time, the language tended toward simplicity, where noun endings did not have to alter for case or gender. English today is replete with monosyllabic words that reflect the effects of this stress shift (i.e., roof, earth, men, etc.).

Old English was commonly spoken in England between approximately 450 and 1150 CE. It began to transform in 1066 CE after the Norman Conquest, when William the Conqueror became the first Norman (French-speaking) king of England, bringing his native tongue to the region. With the influence of French, English began its transformation into what we now call Middle English.

See next week’s post on Middle English and The Canterbury Tales!