Bede's Strategy in Paraphrasing C dmoris Hymn

Daniel Paul O'Donnell, University of Lethbridge

In Book 4, Chapter 24 of the Historia ecclesiastica, Bede provides a Latin translation of Caedmon's first song:

Nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis, potentiam Creatoris et consilium illius, facta Patris gloriae: quomodo ille, cum sit aeternus Deus, omnium miraculorum auctor extitit, qui primo filiis hominum caelum pro culmine tecti, dehinc terram Custos humani generis omnipotens creauit.

(Now we must praise the Maker of the heavenly kingdom, the power of the Creator and his counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory and how He, since he is the eternal God, was the Author of all marvels and first created the heavens as a [gable of the] roof for the children of men and then, the al

mighty Guardian of the human race, created the earth.1)

In sixteen copies of the Historia,2 including the two earliest-known witnesses

(Cambridge, University Library Kk. 5. 16 [M] and St. Petersburg, National

I thank Inge Genee, Michael Twomey, and an anonymous reviewer for JEGP for their com ments on earlier drafts of this article. Research for this article was funded by the University of Lethbridge Research Fund and Internal SSHRC.

i. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon, 196g), IV.24, pp. 416 (Latin text) and 417 (Modern English transla tion). All references to the text of the Latin Historia ecclesiastica are to this edition. I have

modified Colgrave's translation to reflect Bede's Latin more closely. 2. These sixteen manuscripts contain texts belonging to five different recensions of the

Hymn (five other copies of the Hymn are found in manuscripts of the Old English transla tion of the Historia ecclesiastica). Most witnesses to the Hymn have been transcribed in Elliott

Van Kirk Dobbie, The Manuscripts of Caedmon's Hymn and Bede's Death Song, with a Critical Text

of the Ep?stola Cuthberti de Obitu Bedce, Columbia University Studies in English and Compara tive Literature, 128 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1937). Manuscripts of the Hymn not known to Dobbie were subsequently identified and transcribed (with some errors) in K. W.

Humphreys and A. S. C. Ross, "Further Manuscripts of Bede's 'Historia Ecclesiastica,' of the

'Epistola Cuthberti De Obitu Bedae,' and Further Anglo-Saxon Texts of 'Caedmon's Hymn' and 'Bede's Death Song,'" Notes and Queries, 220 (1975), 50-55. See also Daniel Paul

O'Donnell, "A Northumbrian Version of 'Caedmon's Hymn' (Northumbrian Eordu Recen sion) in Brussels, Biblioth?que Royale MS 8245-57 Ef. 62r2-vi : Identification, Edition and Filiation," in Beda Venerabilis: Historian, Monk and Northumbrian, ed. L. A. J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1996), pp. 139-65, and Paul Cavill, "The Manuscripts of Caedmon's 'Hymn'," Anglia, 118 (2000), 499-530.1 have recently completed a comprehensive study of the poem and its textual and cultural contexts: C dmon's Hymn (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, forthcoming).

Black and white facsimiles of all known witnesses are found in Old English Verse Texts from Many Sources: A Comprehensive Collection, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile [EEMF] ,23,

ed. Fred C. Robinson and E. G. Stanley (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1991 ), pll. 2.1-2.21. Color digital facsimiles will be available in O'Donnell, C dmon's Hymn.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology?October ? 2004 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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418 O'Donnell

Library of Russia [formerly Leningrad, M.E. Saltykov-Schedrin Public Li brary], lat. Q. v. I. 18 [P]),3 Bede's Latin "paraphrase" is accompanied by an Old English version of what is clearly intended to be the same text:

Nu scilun herga hefenricaes uard metudaes mehti, and his modgithanc, uerc uuldurfadur? sue he uundra gihuaes, eci dryctin, or astelidae.

5 He aerist scop aeldu barnum hefen to hrofae, halig sceppend; tha middingard, moncynnaes uard, eci dryctin, aefter tiadae firum foldu, frea allmehtig.4

3- These manuscripts are traditionally dated to 737 (M) and 731 (or 732x746) (P) on the basis of chronological notes associated with the capitula to Bede's final chapter. The va

lidity of these "memoranda" as evidence for the manuscripts' date has been vigorously chal

lenged, however. For a discussion and bibliography see R. D. Fulk, A History of Old English Meter (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), Appendix D, and O'Donnell, C d mon 's Hymn, Appendix.

Both manuscripts are most likely to be ascribed on pal?ographie grounds to the eighth century. See N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), articles 122 (P) and 25 (M); Pamela Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manu scripts c. 737?1600 in Cambridge Libraries (Cambridge: Brewer, 1988) (M); and Matti Kilpi? and Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Ex ?nsula Lux: Manuscripts and Hagiographical Material Connected with Medieval England, a Joint Exhibition Organized by Helsinki University Library and the Nation al Library of Russia (Helsinki: Helsinki Univ. Library/The National Library of Finland, 2001 ) (P). Other accounts of the dating of P and M include M. B. Parkes, The Scriptorium ofWear

mouthjarrow (Jarrow: St. Paul's Rectory, 1982), especially pp. 5-11; O. S. Arngart, "On the Dating of Early Bede Manuscripts," Studia Neophilologica, 45 (1973), 47-52; D. H. Wright, "The Date of the Leningrad Bede," Revue B?n?dictine, 71 ( 1961 ), 265-73; E. A. Lowe, "A Key to Bede's Scriptorium: Some Observations on the Leningrad Bede," Scriptorium, 12 (1958), 1-20; Lowe, "An Autograph of the Venerable Bede?" Revue B?n?dictine, 68 (1958), 200-2;

Bernhard Bischoff, "Die Hofbibliothek Karls des Grossen," in Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, 3 vols., ed. Wolfgang Braunfels, 2d ed. (D?sseldorf: Schwann, 1965-1967), II, 56 57; and Peter Hunter Blair, The Moore Bede, EEMF, 9 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, !959)

An extraordinary accuracy is often attributed to these two manuscripts, and especially P. See, for example, Fulk, A History of Old English Meter, p. 427; Parkes, The Scriptorium ofWear mouth-Jarrow, p. 5; and Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old English Verse, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England [CSASE], 4 (Cambridge: Cam bridge Univ. Press, 1990), p. 33. For a recent review of the evidence of the accuracy of P, see Daniel Paul O'Donnell, "The Accuracy of the St. Petersburg Bede," Notes and Queries, 247 (2002), 4-6.

4. All quotations from the vernacular text of C dmon 's Hymn used in this article are from P. They are based on a new transcription prepared by me in the summer of 1998 for Cced mon's Hymn. Punctuation, word division, and line division have been silently modernized. The translation is my own. P has been chosen for this article because of its early date and its close association with Bede's scriptorium (see, in particular, Parkes, Ker, Wright, and the articles by Lowe cited above). It has been preferred to M, which differs insignificantly from P, because it appears to have been more carefully copied and because it is orthographically

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Bede 's Strategy 419

(Now we5 must honor the Guardian of the kingdom of heaven, the might of the Creator, and his intent, the work of the Father of glory?as he, the eter

nal Lord, established the beginning of each of wondrous things. He, the holy Creator, first made heaven as a roof for the children of men; then the Guard ian of mankind, the eternal Lord, the Lord almighty, afterwards appointed the middle earth, the land, for men.)

The relationship between Bede's Latin translation and this Old English poem is problematic.6 On the one hand, the two texts clearly are related.

For the first five lines of the Old English, Bede's "paraphrase" is nearly word for word. While there are some slight differences in word order, and while the two texts use terms for God that differ somewhat in connotation, Bede's version nevertheless

supplies an equivalent for almost every word

in the corresponding Old English.7

less unusual (see, among others, O. S. Anderson, Old English Material in the Leningrad Manu script of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Skrifter Utgivna Av Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssam fundet i Lund/Acta Reg. Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis, XXXI [Lund: Gleer up, 1941 ], pp. 1-3 and 136-45; and O. Arngart, The Leningrad Bede, EEMF, 2 [Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1952], p. 24). Editions of the earliest texts of C dmon's Hymn, in cluding my own forthcoming text, generally prefer M for their base text on account of its unusual dialectal readings.

5. This translation adopts the traditional assumption that scilun herga is glossed directly by Bede's debemus (i.e., that "we" must be understood in line la). An alternative reading, in which uerc (1. 3a) is understood as the subject of scilun in the Old English text, has been proposed by D. R. Howlett, C. J. E. Ball, and Bruce Mitchell. See Howiett, "The Theology of C dmon 's Hymn," Leeds Studies in English [LSE] ,7(1974), 2-12; Ball, "Homonymy and Poly semy: A Problem for Lexicographers," in Problems of Old English Lexicography: Studies in Mem

ory of Angus Cameron, ed. Alfred Bammesberger, Eichst?tter Beitr?ge, 15 (Regensburg: Pustet, 1985), pp. 39-41; and Mitchell, "C dmon's Hymn, Line 1: What is the Subject of Scylun or its Variants," LSE, 16 (1985), 190-97. Neither reading can be supported unambiguously with

parallels from the Old English corpus (see, in particular, Mitchell, "C dmon's Hymn, Line 1," pp. 192-93, for a discussion). While the five earliest manuscripts of the Hymn omit we,

all later copies contain the pronoun. In one of the five earliest manuscripts, Oxford, Cor

pus Christi College, 279, B, the pronoun has been added by a corrector. Because Latin re

quires unambiguous first-person plural morphology, Bede would have been unable to re

produce this ambiguity in his translation. 6. The literature on Bede's account of Caedmon and his paraphrase is immense. Impor

tant recent discussions include Andy Orchard, "Poetic Inspiration and Prosaic Translation: The Making of C dmon's Hymn," in Studies in English Language and Literature: 'Doubt Wisely': Papers in Honour of E.G. Stanley, ed. M.J. Toswell and E. M. Tyler (London: Routledge, igg6), pp. 402-22; Kevin S. Kiernan, "Reading 'Caedmon's Hymn' with Someone Else's Glosses," Representations, 32 (1990), 157-74; Ute Schwab, "The Miracles of Caedmon?Revisited," Atti delTAccademia Peloritana, Classe di lettere filosofa e belle arti, 59 (1983), 5?36; Schwab, "The

Miracles of Caedmon," English Studies, 64 (1983), 1-17; and Schwab, Caedmon (Messina: Peloritana, 1972). See also O'Donnell, C dmon's Hymn, Chap. 1.

7. For a detailed discussion, see Orchard, "Poetic Inspiration," p. 413 and nn. 54 and 55.

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420 O 'Donnell

Table 1: Correspondences between C dmons Hymn lines 1-5 and Bede's Para

phrase8

Old English Latin

la b 2a b 3a b 4a b 5a b

Nu scilun herga hefenricaes uard

metudaes mehti and his modgithanc uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes eci dryctin or astelidae he asrist scop10 aeldu barnum

Nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis

potentiam Creatoris et consilium illius facta Patris gloriae quomodo ille cum sit aeternus Deus9 omnium miraculorum auctor extitit

qui primo filiis hominum

On the other hand, the relationship between the two versions is con

siderably freer in the equivalent of the last four lines of the Old English poem. Eight of the seventeen Old English words in this part of the ver nacular text have no

equivalent in Bede's Latin; one word in Bede's ver

sion, culmine"(as a) gable," has no equivalent in the Old English. As Andy Orchard has noted, moreover, there is also a marked difference in tone.11

Where in lines 1-5, Bede's paraphrase shows no obvious ornamentation

or metrical organization,12 his version of the last four lines contains three

Latin hexameter cadences, including one that requires the presence of

culmineto scan correctly: caelumpro culmine tecti, Gustos humani generis, and

omnipotensP

8. Underlining in the Old English column indicates that a word has been moved in or omitted from Bede's paraphrase. In the Latin column, underlining is used to mark passag es in which Bede has added to or significantly recast the syntax of the Old English. Similar, though not identical, tables appear in Orchard, "Poetic Inspiration," p. 412; Schwab, "Mir acles," p. 13; Schwab, "Miracles Revisited," p. 30; and Schwab, Caedmon, pp. 21-22.

9. This section of the paraphrase recasts the syntax of the Old English. The significance of the change is discussed below. Orchard suggests in his table that aeternus Deus corresponds to halig sceppend (1. 6b). That this is incorrect is suggested by the fact that the two epithets appear in different sentences in their respective texts. In the main text of his essay, more over, Orchard argues that there is "no precise counterpart" to line 6b in Bede's translation, apparently contradicting his own table (p. 412). Schwab's tables indicate that she under stands aeternus Deus as a translation of eci dryctin.

10. Scop in this line is translated, together with tiad (1. 8b), by creauitvX the end of Bede's paraphrase.

11. See Orchard, "Poetic Inspiration," p. 413 and n. 59. 12. Schwab argues that the paraphrase as a whole can be understood as rhythmic hexam

eter verse. Doing so requires us to ignore several words in the translation as it now stands, however, and produces verse that, unlike the cadences pointed to by Orchard, scans poorly. See Schwab, "Miracles," pp. 13-14, and Caedmon, pp. 29-30, and cf. Orchard, "Poetic In

spiration," p. 413 and n. 59, and B. Luiselli, "Beda e l'inno di Caedmon," Studi Medievali, H (!973)> 1013"36

13. Orchard, "Poetic Inspiration," p. 413, and Schwab, "Miracles," p. 13.

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Bede's Strategy 421

Table 2: Correspondences between Ccedmons Hymn lines 6-9 and Bede's Para

phrase14

Old English Latin

6a hefen to hrofse caelum pro culmine tecti b halig sceppend

7a tha middingard dehinc terram b moncynnaes uard Custos humani generis

8a eci dryctin b aefter tiadae15

9a firum foldu b frea allmehtig. omnipotens creauit

Three solutions to this puzzle have been proposed over the last thirty five years. The first and most subtle suggestion is that of Ute Schwab, who uses the differences between Bede's partially metrical translation and the vernacular text to argue that the paraphrase must be adapted from an

intermediate rhythmic Latin translation:

Dopo queste considerazioni pare possibile, come gi? detto, prospettare l'ipotesi che Beda abbia trovato gi? pronta tale traduzione r?tmica e che si sia quindi limitato ad inserirla nella H [istoria] E [eclesi?stica] (una traduzione che potrebbe addirittura essere la prima trascrizione ??iYLnno, anteriore a

quella in volgare??). In ogni caso gli ? esametri ? ritmici d?lia traduzione latina non sono degni n? di Beda n? d?lia sua scuola. D'altra parte, sarebbe strano che Beda si sia limitato a citare una versione latina del canto anziehe

prep?rame una direttamente dall'originale in volgare, specialmente se si deve

prestar fede a quanto dice l'Epistola Cuthberti circa il suo interesse per Tarte

po?tica germ?nica.16

In more recent years, Kevin Kiernan has used the differences between the

two versions of the Hymn to suggest that the Old English text is a back translation from Bede's Latin rather than its source:

The glosses show that Bede would have been able to "paraphrase" the "Hymn" word for word. . . . But if Bede actually paraphrased this version of Caedmon's

"Hymn," why did he precisely translate phrase by phrase for two-thirds of the

poem and then leave out three half-lines of verse ... ? It seems especially strange for him to omit the new epithets for God, haleg scepen and frea, and to eliminate all the alliteration, the most salient feature of the verse. It is

14- Underlining in the Old English column indicates that a word has been moved in or omitted from Bede's paraphrase. In the Latin column, underlining is used to mark passag es in which Bede has added to or significantly recast the syntax of the Old English.

15. While no literal equivalent for line 8b is found in Bede's paraphrase, both elements of the half-line are preserved: tiad , like scop (1. 5a), is translated by creauitm the last line of the paraphrase; after is translated, with tha (1. 7a), by dehinc in the equivalent to line 7a.

16. Schwab, Caedmon, p. 30. See also Schwab, "Miracles," pp. 13-14, and "Miracles Revis ited," p. 30.

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42 2 O'Donnell

difficult to appreciate how Bede might think the inclusion of these things would

spoil his translation. If we take the position, instead, that an enterpris ing Anglo-Saxon myth maker translated Bede's Latin into Old English, we can see that he (or she) translated all of Bede's Latin version and, compelled by the meter, boldly added a few half-lines and provided the necessary allit eration.17

The most recent solution, proposed by Andy Orchard, assumes that the

differences between Bede's text and surviving vernacular versions of the

poem indicate a change in translation strategy on Bede's part midway

through his adaptation of the Old English:

Quite apart from the omissions and semantic disparities between the Old English and the Latin, it is notable that the Latin equivalents for the second sentence of the Old English can in some sense be considered "poetic," since several can be scanned to fit a Latin hexameter. So the phrases caelum pro culmine tecti, Gustos humani generis, as well as the term omnipotens, can, as they stand, all be accommodated within the Latin hexameter line. The fact that there is no

equivalent in the Old English for culmine (line 6a) only under lines the

"poetic" nature of the Latin version, the more so since none of the Latin phrases equating with the first sentence of the Old English scans in a manner suitable for hexameters, with the possible exception of the very first

phrase, Nunc laudare debemus (a perfect ending for a rhythmical hexame ter) .... Clearly, Bede wished to lend his version a "poetic" flavour, yet was

unwilling simply to produce a metrical translation.18

None of these solutions is entirely satisfactory. In Schwab's case, two

problems are left unsolved: why Bede would choose to use such a poor rhythmic intermediary rather than work with the Old English directly, and

why, having decided to do so, he would then ruin the meter of this inter

mediary by making a number of minor nonmetrical additions: cum sit and

Deus in the equivalent to line 4a, and dehinc in the equivalent to line 7a.19 In Kiernan's case, the problems involve the supposed Old English forg

17- Kiernan, "Reading 'Caedmon's Hymn'," p. 163. Similar arguments (on these and other grounds) have been made by David N. Dumville, "'Beowulf and the Celtic World: The Uses of Evidence," Traditio, 37 (1981), 109-60, and G. R. Isaac, "The Date and Origin of Caed

mon's Hymn," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 98 ( 1997), 217-28. Kiernan's argument has been vigorously challenged by a number of scholars. See, among others, Frederick M. Biggs, "Deor's Threatened 'Blame Poem'," Studies in Philology, 94 (1997), 307, n. 46; Fulk, A His tory of Old English Meter, Appendix D, especially pp. 427-28; and O'Donnell, Ccedmon's Hymn,

Appendix. Nineteenth-century arguments about the priority of the vernacular Hymn are of ten cited in the modern debate. These were based on a very incomplete knowledge of the

manuscript evidence and therefore, strictly speaking, are not relevant to contemporary dis cussions. A bibliography of nineteenth-century scholarship on the question can be found in Richard Paul W?lker, Grundriss zur Geschichte der angels?chsischen Litteratur (Leipzig: Veit

& Comp., 1885), pp. 119-20. 18. Orchard, "Poetic Inspiration," p. 413. ig. See Schwab, Caedmon, pp. 30-31 for a discussion. Also Schwab, "Miracles," pp. 13

14, and "Miracles Revisited," p. 30.

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Bede's Strategy 423

er's strategy in translating Bede's text: Why, faced with unambiguous first

person plural morphology in the opening line of his Latin "original" (Nunc debemus laudare), would he decide to adopt the very unusual pronoun-less construction (M? sculon her?an) found in the Hymns five earliest manu scripts?20 Why, assuming he could set his own alliteration, would he choose to translate Bede's Biblical Latin tagfiliis hominem with the rare formula aelda barnum (eleven occurrences) or the nonce collocation eordu barnum instead of the far more usual translation monna barnum (100 out of 102

glossed occurrences; thirty-five collocations in verse) used elsewhere in the poetic corpus?21 Finally, why, having decided to translate the first six lines of Bede's paraphrase with almost word-for-word accuracy, would he de

cide to alter his approach to the last four by adding the "extra" material in lines 6-9? In Orchard's case, the problem involves explaining why Bede

might decide to change his approach to the Old English text two-thirds of the way through his translation, and why, having apparently decided to give his translation a "'poetic' flavour" in lines 6-9, he did not revise

his literal translation of the first five lines to bring it in step with the Kunst

prosa of the closing verses.

In this article, I would like to propose a new solution to the problem of the relationship between Bede's paraphrase and the Old English Hymn.

Building on Orchard's observations concerning the change in tone be

tween lines 1-5 and 6-9,1 explain this difference by pointing to changes in his source text. As I shall demonstrate, Bede's translation is not really inconsistent: while there is a

change in literal accuracy and "flavour" two

thirds of the way through, the roots of this change lie in Caedmon's Old

English, not Bede's Latin. As we shall see, the vernacular text of C dmon 's

Hymn itself changes style significantly at the beginning of line 5, particu larly in the way it handles poetic variation. Bede's paraphrase reflects this

change in Caedmon's original by becoming itself less literal at the moment the ornamental variation increases. But there is another factor at work as

well. Variation is a central feature of Old English poetic style,22 and Bede sees Caedmon as a preeminent Anglo-Saxon poet. Anxious to illustrate the

literary quality of Caedmon's work to an audience that he could not as

20. See Mitchell, "

C dmon 's Hymn, Line i," for a discussion of the apparently unparalleled form of the pronoun-less construction. The fact that this construction is found in manuscripts belonging to one West-Saxon and one Northumbrian recension of the Hymn (see above, n. 5) suggests that it is legitimate Old English.

21. Figures based on The Complete Corpus of Old English in Machine Readable Form (TEI Com patible Version), 2d TEI-conformant edition [Computer file], ed. Antonette di Paolo Healey, etal. (Oxford: Oxford Text Archive, 1994).

22. For a discussion, see Fred C. Robinson, "Two Aspects of Variation in Old English Po

etry," in his The Tomb of Beowulf and Other Essays on Old English (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 71-86.

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424 O'Donnell

sume would be familiar with the original text or language, Bede uses hex ameter cadences in his paraphrase of the poem's last four lines to give his reader a sense of the effect the vernacular poem would have had on its

original audience.23 Rather than an inexplicable problem, Bede's trans

lation is in fact a carefully considered production, perfectly in keeping with the standard he sets himself in his discussion of the difficulties encoun tered in translating poetry from one language to another. In examining the choices he makes in translating Caedmon's text, we uncover evidence

that allows us at least in part to determine how one intellectually signifi cant Anglo-Saxon understood his native poetry.24

THE STRUCTURE OF CMDMON'S HYMN

As numerous commentators have pointed out, the Old English text of C dmon 's Hymn can be divided into two main rhetorical sections of two clauses each.25 The first section, comprising lines 1-4, states the poem's

theme, exhorting men to worship God and explaining why this praise is

desirable; the second, lines 5-9, contains a more leisurely summary of the

actual order of Creation, beginning with the heavens and ending with the creation of the earth for men.

This two-part division is reflected in the poem's syntax and pacing. In the more

expansive lines 5-9, the constituent clauses are

syntactically

parallel. They are loosely linked by the adverb of time tha ("then," 1. 7a), but are not formally subordinated to one another. Their parallelism is

emphasized, moreover, by their use of verbs that are, broadly speaking,

23- For discussion of a further example of this type of "generic translation," this time from Latin into Old English, see Daniel Paul O'Donnell, "Fish and Fowl: Generic Expectations and the Relationship between the Old English PhoenixPoem and Lactantius's DeAvePhoen

ice," in Germanic Texts and Latin Models: Medieval Reconstructions, ed. K. E Olsen, A. Harbus, and Tette Hofstra (Paris: Peeters, 2001), pp. 157-71.

24. For the rest of this essay, I will assume that Bede's paraphrase has been translated from a text substantially similar to existing Old English recensions of C dmon 's Hymn. Some evi dence for this assumption can be found in the preceding paragraph. For a more detailed

defense, see O'Donnell, C dmon s Hymn, ?? 4.37-445. 25. This is a commonplace of modern C dmon's Hymn criticism. Influential discussions

include Bernard Felix Hupp?, "Caedmon's Hymn," in Doctrine and Poetry: Augustine's Influence on Old English Poetry (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1959), pp. 99-130; E. G. Stanley, "The Old est English Poetry Now Extant," in his A Collection of Papers with Emphasis on Old English, Pub lications of the Dictionary of Old English 3 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Stud ies, 1987), at pp. 15-16; and the studies by Schwab. Howlett's division of the poem into "three sentences" ("The Theology," p. 7) differs only in the rhetorical strength he attributes to the clause boundary at the end of line 3a; otherwise, his understanding of the poem's syntactic structure is identical to that of Hupp?, Stanley, and Schwab: Howlett's three sentences con tain a total of four clauses, with boundaries at the ends of lines 3a, 4b, 7a, and 9b (cf. Or chard, "Poetic Inspiration," p. 413, n. 58).

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Bede's Strategy 425

synonymous, refer to the same subject, and agree in tense and mood: scop ("created," 1. 5a) and tiadce ("appointed, established," 1. 8b). In lines 1-4,

on the other hand, the relationship of the two constituent clauses is ad

verbial: the second clause is subordinate to the first and differs from it in the subject, mood, and tense of its main verb.

A similar distinction can be seen in the way nouns and pronouns refer

ring to God are used in the course of the Old English poem. In the first four lines, there is very little syntactic apposition: references to God either differ in case or are associated with different aspects of the Godhead. The first

epithet in the poem, uard ("Guardian," 1. lb), is accusative singular and refers to God the Father; the second, third, and fourth references, metud s ("Creator," 1. 2a), his (1. 2b), and uuldurfadur ("Father of glory," 1. 3a), are all genitive singular but modify nouns describing different parts

of God's person and work.26 Only when we come to the nominative sin

gular pronoun he in line 3b and the nominative singular noun phrase eci

dryctin ("eternal Lord") in line 4a do we find an example of true syntac tic

apposition. In this case, the two forms have the same referent and are

part of the subject of the same finite verb. Lines 5-9, in contrast, show considerably more syntactically apposite variation. In this section, the

epithets and pronouns describing God are all in the same case and per form an identical syntactic function?key aspects of Fred C. Robinson's useful definition of Old English poetic variation as "syntactically parallel words or

word-groups which share a common referent and which occur

within a single clause."27 The first two references to God, he (1. 5a) and haligsceppend ("holy Creator," 1. 6b), are nominative singular and the sub ject of scop (1. 5a). In the second clause, moncynn s uard ("Guardian of mankind," 1. 7b), eci dryctin ("eternal Lord," 1. 8a), andfrea allmehtig ("Lord almighty," 1. 9b) are also all nominative singular and refer to the subject of tiad (1. 8b).

BEDE'S STRATEGY IN TRANSLATING C DMON'S HYMN

In translating Ccedmon 's Hymn for readers of his Latin Historia ecclesiastica, Bede sets out to

reproduce the general sense, rather than the specific de

tails, of his source. He is, indeed, quite emphatic about this practice. He

begins his paraphrase with a note that he will be providing only the sensus

26. References to the Godhead are discussed in detail in Hupp?, Howlett, and Schwab's work on the Hymn. It is possible, as Howlett, Ball, and Mitchell have argued, to read uerc as the nominative plural neuter subject of scilun (1. 1). See above, n. 5.

27. Robinson, "Two Aspects," p. 73.

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426 O'Donnell

of the poem and concludes with his famous reminder about the difficul ties of translating poetry ad uerbum from one language to another:

Hic est sensus, non autem ordo ipse uerborum, quae dormiens ille canebat;

?eque enim possunt carmina, quamuis optime conposita, ex alia in aliam

linguam ad uerbum sine detrimento sui decoris ac dignitatis transferri.

(This is the sense but not the order of the words which he sang as he slept. For it is not possible to translate verse, however well composed, literally from one language to another with some loss of beauty and dignity.28)

In his actual translation, Bede applies this emphasis on sense over detail

consistently, stripping or recasting all forms from the original Old English that do not contribute directly to the poem's meaning. In lines 3b and 4a,

Bede eliminates the appositive repetition of the nominative singular references to God in Caedmon's original by recasting the second nomina

tive phrase, eci dryctin (1. 4a), as part of a new subordinate clause, cum sit aeternusDeus ("since he is the eternal God"; see above, Table 1). In the last

five lines of the poem, Bede eliminates the repetition of the Old English verbs scop and tiad in lines 5a and 8b by recasting the entire section so that both clauses take creauitas their main verb (see above, Table 2).

More dramatic, however, is the effect this strategy has on the numer

ous appositive elements in the Old English poem's second section. Rath er than

recasting, in this part of the poem Bede eliminates the repetition

by simply deleting all but the first appositive term in each sequence:29 in lines 5 and 6, Bede retains the first nominative of the clause, he (1. 5a, trans

lated as qui) and eliminates the second, halig sceppend (1. 6b). In lines 7 9, Bede translates the first epithet, moncynnces uard (1. 7b), as Custos hu

mani, eliminates the second epithet, eci dryctin (1. 8a), and retains only the final adjective of the third, frea allmehtig (1. 9b):30

He aerist scop aeldu barnum qui primo filiis hominum caelum pro hefen to hrofae, halig sceppend; culmine tecti, dehinc terram Custos

tha middingard, moncynnaes uard, humani generis omnipotens creauit.

eci dryctin, aefter tiadae firum foldu, frea allmehtig.

These omissions of repetitive material go a long way toward explaining the most obvious seeming inconsistency in Bede's translation: the change from almost word-for-word accuracy that characterizes his version of the

first five lines to his far more loose rendition of the last four. In the case

2 8. Bede 's Ecclesiastical History, pp. 416, 417. 29. In the case of the verbs scop (1. 5a) and tiad (1. 8b), Bede eliminates the variation by

recasting his sentence so that both clauses share the same finite verb (creauit). 30. Nouns and pronouns with equivalents in both versions of the text are underlined.

Strike through is used to indicate Old English words not directly represented in Bede's trans lation.

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Bede 's Strategy 427

of lines 1-4, Bede is able to translate all but one of the original six epi thets in the vernacular text without repeating himself; the only time he cannot translate the original without repetition, he eliminates the "redun

dancy" by recasting the offending epithet as a subordinate clause. The far

more frequent ornamental variation in the poem's last five lines, in con

trast, provides him with more material to eliminate. In addition to collaps

ing the two Old English verbs into his final creauit, Bede also in these lines excises three pairs of nominative singular references to God. His insistence

on retaining the first reference in each appositive sequence, moreover,

explains why the change in Bede's translation appears to begin in line 6, one line after the beginning of the more ornamental section in Caedmon

original poem: since the second nominative singular reference to God in the second section of the poem doesn't come until line 6b, Bede is able

to translate line 5 essentially word for word, deleting only the verb scop. But while it easily accounts for the omissions from Bede's paraphrase

of the Hymn's last five lines, this emphasis on removing repetition does not

necessarily explain why Bede should begin using hexameter cadences in this second part of the poem, or add a "redundancy" of his own in the met

rically necessary but otherwise superfluous culmine. This is where Orchard's

observation that the hexameter cadences in the paraphrase are restricted

to the equivalent of the Old English poem's last four lines?the lines from which Bede also makes his most

significant cuts?is relevant.31 The mate

rial Bede removes from these lines, while not essential to the sense of the

Old English poem, nevertheless does represent an important feature of Old English poetic style. In recasting the relevant passages as ornamental

Latin hexameter cadences, Bede is able to find a form for his translation that partially mimics the ornamental effect Caedmon's variation would have

had for an audience able to appreciate the vernacular original.32

31. Orchard, "Poetic Inspiration," p. 413. 32. Considerable scholarly controversy has arisen in recent years as to why Bede should

omit the original Old English of C dmon 's Hymn from the main body of his Historia ecclesias tica, especially since his own Death Songis quoted in Cuthbert's Latin epistle on Bede's death.

For discussion of the problem, see, among others, Biggs, "Deor's Threatened 'Blame Poem'," p. 304 and n. 38; Kiernan, "Reading 'Caedmon's Hymn'," pp. 157-58; and Allen J. Frantz en, Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1990), p. 146. Cuthbert's Epistle has been edited by Dobbie, Manu scripts of C dmon 's Hymn, and Colgrave and Mynors, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, pp. 580-87.

This debate fails, to my mind, to pay sufficient attention to differences in genre and in tended audiences between the two Latin works: Cuthbert's epistle is, in the first instance, intended for readers who knew its subject and were interested in his final words; what these

words were is, therefore, central to the text's purpose. Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, on the other

hand, is a work of Anglo-Saxon church and political history (in which Caedmon plays a mi nor part) aimed a general European intellectual audience?few of whom could be assumed to understand Old English or share any real aesthetic interest in even the best of its poetry.

While the Caedmon chapter has attracted intense interest from modern scholars, it seems doubtful that it would have been the primary attraction of Bede's work for very many mem bers of his original audience.

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428 O'Donnell

The fact that these cadences are found in the work of several significant Christian Latin poets and, in one case at least, echoed in the Aeneid?3 only adds to the effect. As William D. McCready has shown, Bede devoted con siderable attention throughout his career to demonstrating the equal or

greater claim Christian literature had to aesthetic excellence in compar ison with secular letters.34 In his rhetorical works, De arte m?trica and De

schematibus et tropis, Bede frequently substitutes passages from Christian

authors for non-Christian excerpts in his sources. As he notes in the pref ace to De schematibus, moreover, Bede makes these substitutions as much

to demonstrate the aesthetic quality of Christian literature as to propagate its doctrine:

Solet aliquoties in Scripturis ordo uerborum causa decoris aliter quam uulgaris uia dicendi habet figuratus inueniri. Quod grammatici Graece schema uocant, nos habitum uel formam uel figuram recte nominamus, quia per hoc

quodam modo uestitur et ornatur oratio. ... Et quidem gloriantur Graeci

talium se figurarum siue troporum fuisse repertores. Sed ut cognoscas, di lectissime fili, cognoscant omnes qui haec legere uoluerint quia sancta Scrip tura ceteris omnibus scripturis non solum auctoritate, quia diuina est, uel

utilitate, quia ad uitam ducit aeternam, sed et antiquitate et ipsa praeemi net positione dicendi, placuit mihi collectis de ipsa exemplis ostendere quia nihil huiusmodi schematum siue troporum ualent praetendere saecularis

eloquentiae magistri, quod non in ilia praecesserit.

(It is quite usual to find that, for the sake of embellishment, word order in written compositions is frequently fashioned in a figured manner different from that of ordinary speech. The grammarians use the Greek term "sche

ma" for this practice, whereas we correctly label it a "manner," "form," or

"figure," because through it speech is in some way clothed or adorned. . . .

The Greeks pride themselves on having invented these figures or tropes. But,

my beloved child, in order that you and all who wish to read this work may know that Holy Writ surpasses all other writings not merely in authority be cause it is divine, or in usefulness because it leads to eternal life, but also for

Evidence for the distinction between Cuthbert's letter and Bede's History is to be seen in the pronouns used to refer to the English language in the two works. In Cuthbert's Epistle,

Bede is described as being doctus in nostris carminibus ("learned in our song") and to have sung in nostra . . . lingua ("our language"; Bede's Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. Colgrave and Mynors, p. 580). In Bede's account of Caedmon's inspiration, however, Caedmon is described as singing in sua, id est Anglorum, lingua ("his own, that is the English, language"; Colgrave and Mynors, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, p. 414; I have modified Colgrave's transla tion to reflect the Latin more closely).

33. Caelumpro culmine tecti is found in the Aeneid (IV. 186 and with slight variation, II.695), the preface to the Heliand (1. 6), and with some variation, Aldhelm's De laudibus virginum (1. 2) and Bede's Vita S. Cuthberti (1. 334). Humani generis is likewise a metrical commonplace found, for example, in Aldhelm's Carmen de uirginitate (1. 84). Examples are discussed in Schwab, "Miracles," pp. 13-14, and Orchard, "Poetic Inspiration," p. 413, note 59.

34. W. D. McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede, Studies and Texts, 118 (Toronto: Pon tifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1994), especially pp. 12-13.

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Bede's Strategy 429

its age and artistic composition, I have chosen to demonstrate by means of

examples collected from Holy Writ that teachers of secular eloquence in any

age have not been able to furnish us with any of these figures and tropes which did not appear first in Holy Writ.35)

Bede is talking primarily about the Bible in this passage, but the thought is in keeping with his views on Christian literature more generally, an opin ion suggested in the case of the De schematibus by his use of three quota tions from nonscriptural Christian writings as examples alongside his Bib lical examples.36 In telling Caedmon's story, and in paraphrasing his most famous poem in the Historia ecclesiastica, Bede places the herdsman poet into the same exalted company as the Christian Latin poets he quotes in

his rhetorical works. By substituting the hexameter cadences, particularly those shared with the great Christian and pagan poets, for Caedmon's orig inal vernacular variation in his translation, Bede demonstrates to a non

English-speaking audience the extent to which Caedmon's work adapts and,

indeed, perhaps supersedes its poetic predecessors as well.

BEDE'S PARAPHRASE AS AESTHETIC RESPONSE

The above argument, if correct, has important implications for our knowl

edge of Anglo-Saxon poetic history. Almost everything we know about

Anglo-Saxon poetic practice has been deduced from the surviving mon uments.37 Anglo-Saxon audiences left

no explicit accounts of the metri

cal basis for their verses, their methods of composition, or the generic classifications, if any, they recognized. Bede's account of the poet Caed

mon is one of very few nonfiction accounts of the production and recep

tion of contemporary vernacular verse,38 and one of only two in which

this discussion concerns the performance and reception of a

surviving

35- Bede, De schematibus et tropis i, ed. Calvin Kendall, Corpus Christianorum Series Lati

na, 123A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), pp. 142-43. Translation by Gussie Hecht Tannenhaus, "Concerning Figures and Tropes," in Readings in Medieval Rhetoric, ed. Joseph Miller (Bloo

mington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1973), p. 97. 36. McCready, Miracles and the Venerable Bede, pp. 12-13. 37. A careful discussion of the problems involved in identifying Old English verse can be

found in H. Momma, The Composition of Old English Poetry, CSASE 20 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997). See, in particular, pp. 1-7.

38. A discussion of surviving accounts of vernacular poetic production and reception can

be found in Jeff Opland, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 1980). Bede's description of Caedmon is discussed on pp. 106-20. Although Opland's discussion is focussed primarily on uncovering evidence of oral composition,

his

work covers most if not all accounts of vernacular poetic composition and reception. See also Roberta Frank, "The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet," Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, 75 (1993), 11?36.

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43 o O'Donnell

Old English poem.39 If Cuthbert is correct in claiming that Bede was doc tus in nostris carminibus ("learned in our song"),40 then Bede's careful sub stitution of Latin hexameter cadences for Caedmon's

appositive variation

constitutes important, though implicit, evidence for contemporary rec

ognition of the aesthetically important role such variation plays in Anglo Saxon vernacular poetry. By translating Caedmon's highly ornamental

final four lines in a far more poetic fashion than his less ornamental first

five, Bede provides his Latin readers (and, in the process, modern read ers as well) with a model for understanding what Caedmon's work might have meant to audiences who were able to understand the poem in the

context of the vernacular literary tradition it adapts. By including in this section of the poem cadences used by the great poets, moreover, Bede

provides us with an indication of the superlative quality he associates with

Caedmon's work. In addition to confirming modern discussions of the

nature and aesthetic importance of appositive variation to Old English poetry, Bede's translation also provides us with an implicit comment on

the aesthetic quality of Caedmon's work?an otherwise unparalleled oc

currence in the period. But Bede's translation is as significant for what it does not emphasize

as for what it does. This is particularly true of Caedmon's use of "traditional

Germanic" epithets, especially uard, frea, and dryctin, to describe God. In

modern discussions of the Hymn, Caedmon's use of these epithets is usu

ally understood as a central element of his poem's aesthetic and histori

cal significance.41 As A. H. Smith suggests,

39- The second account is Cuthbert's description of Bede's performance of his Death Song. A third reference connecting the composition of a known Old English poem to a historical

Anglo-Saxon poet is the attribution to Alfred of the Old English verse translation of Boeth ius's Metres in two prefatory texts. This text does not contain an account of the poet's per formance, however. See Kenneth Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), pp. 293-97. The significance of Bede's account as literary history is dis cussed in Frank, "The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet," pp. 29-30, and O'Donnell, C dmon's Hymn, Chap. 1.

40. See Colgrave and Mynors, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, p. 580 (I have replaced Colgrave's translation with one that reflects Bede's Latin more closely). The significance of this claim is explored in Opland, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry, pp. 140-44.

41. Representative discussions can be found in E. G. Stanley, "New Formulas for Old: Caedmon's Hymn in Pagans and Christians: The Interplay between Christian Latin and Tradition al Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, ed. T. Hofstra, L. A. R. J. Houwen, and A. A.

McDonald (Groningen: Forster, 1995), pp. 131-48; Robinson, Beowulfand the Appositive Style (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1985), especially pp. 29-59; and "Caedmon," The New

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th ed. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998), vol. II, p. 716. Caedmon's influence on the Germanic languages more generally is discussed in D. H. Green, The Carolingian Lord (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1965), especially pp. 286-98. See also O'Donnell, C dmon's Hymn, Chap. 3.

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Bede 's Strategy 431

[I]n Caedmon's time when Northumbria had been converted to Christiani ty for only half a century these phrases [i.e., uard, eci dryctin, mdfrea lmehtig] belonging to Christian poetry could scarcely have become conventional, as

they certainly were in later Old English; on the contrary, the poem represents the beginnings of such a diction and its freshness and originality must have

been felt a generation or more after its composition; no mere assembling of clich?s would have called for inspiration, divine or otherwise.42

There is, however, nothing in Bede's account of Caedmon's life or para

phrase of his Hymn to suggest that Bede shared this sense of novelty or

importance. No allusion is made anywhere in Bede's account to the "fresh

ness" of Caedmon's diction. Bede's own praise of the Hymn concentrates

on its sweetness, order, and propagan dis tic value; the praise he puts more

indirectly in the mouths of Hild and her counselors is primarily concerned with its smoothness, propriety, and faithfulness to its sources. More signifi

cantly, Bede does not appear to devote any particular attention to Caed

mon's vocabulary in his translation. In contrast to his programmatic elim

ination of Caedmon's verbal repetition, Bede's rendering of the poet's

specific word choice is remarkably diffident. His translation contains no

equivalent for frea (1. ga), an apparently traditional Germanic epithet commonly applied to God in Old English and other Germanic Christian vernacular poetry.43 It also ignores one occurrence of dryctin (a second

apparently traditional epithet) in line 4a while glossing the second, in line 8a, with Deus, a word containing no sense of the Lordship found in Caed

mon's original verse (as Green notes, the usual Latin equivalent for dryc

tin is dominus).^ In the case of uard ("guardian," 11. lb and 7b), finally, Bede's translation hides Caedmon's use of verbal echoes as a structural

device: while Bede translates the term with Custos, a word with similar connotations of guardianship, on its second occasion, his translation of

its first appearance uses a form, auctorem ("author, founder") with quite different connotations.

Taken together, this evidence suggests both that Bede's translation of

Ccedmon 's Hymn was a carefully considered production and that his strate

gy for paraphrasing the poem for readers of the Latin Historia ecclesiastica

reveals how he understood the original vernacular text. In Bede's read

ing, the most striking element of the Hymn appears to have been its use of ornamental

appositional variation, particularly in lines 5-9. His trans

lation eliminates this variation programmatically and adopts a more "po etic" tone in its rendition of those lines in which the Old English poem shows the heaviest use of

syntactic apposition. In contrast to modern read

42. Smith, Three Northumbrian Poems, rev. ed. (Exeter: Univ. of Exeter Press, 1978), p. 15. 43. See Green, Carolingian Lord, pp. 265-69, and Stanley, "New Epithets." 44. Green, Carolingian Lord, p. 298.

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432 O'Donnell

ers, however, Bede appears to have been far less struck by the boldness of Caedmon's

vocabulary: his translation adopts no consistent attitude in

paraphrasing Caedmon's terms for God apart from removing the evidence

of repeated epithets and verbal echoes in lines lb and 7b, and 4a and 8a.

Although it shows a drastic change in tone and accuracy approximately two-thirds of the way through, the relationship between Bede's paraphrase

and surviving vernacular copies of the poem is not nearly as puzzling as

scholars have long imagined; it is, instead, a carefully controlled produc tion that closely (if negatively) follows a key aesthetic feature of Caedmon's

original text.

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