Caedmon's Hymn of Creation

My first course in the first semester of my first year in college – and at 8 AM on Monday morning, it was literally my first course in college – was a class called “Fantasy As Literature.” How I ended up in this class to fulfill the freshman literature requirement is a detail long forgotten; I wanted Early American, but for some reason the only option available was this one. You take what you can get.?

In the modern era, fantasy as a genre has become mainstream – witness the surge in popularity of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (even among atheists), and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. But a generation ago, fantasy was more of a niche genre, and it was a niche this reader didn’t inhabit – I preferred my fiction historical and less speculative.?

It was a course I would never have chosen if I’d had other options – but it turned out to be unforgettable. Over the course of the semester, we read Greek myths (my first college paper was on the story of Echo and Narcissus – “Out of Pain Comes Beauty”), the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and stories ranging from Franz Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” to James Thurber’s “Secret Life of Walter Mitty” to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Leaf By Niggle.” This last was one of the most arrestingly beautiful stories I had ever read, making me wonder if I’d sold fantasy literature short.

But the work I loved the most in this class was the medieval epic poem “Beowulf,”? written by an anonymous poet and set in Scandinavia in the fifth and sixth centuries. I’d read it the year before, in high school, but got to experience it in a whole new way when Professor Bill Johnson introduced us to the language “Beowulf” was composed in: Old English. To do this, he played a recording of a contemporary speaker reading the Lord’s Prayer in Old English, while we followed along with a side-by-side copy of the prayer in both Old and Modern English. The idea was to use a well-known passage for reference (what does it say that only a generation ago, the Lord's Prayer was well-known?), and as I read the old and modern words and listened to the speaker enunciate them, it was as if I was encountering a language passed down to me by my ancestors, hearing it for the first time but finding it strangely familiar.?

I did not encounter Old English again until last year, when I stumbled upon a poem entitled "Caedmon’s Hymn of Creation." Caedmon, who would have been roughly a?contemporary of the "Beowulf" poet, comes to us via the writings of the Venerable Bede, an English monk, writer, and scholar most famous for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People.? St. Bede tells us that Caedmon was a poor cow-herder who could neither read, write, nor carry a tune – yet at a banquet miraculously composed the words and music to a song of praise to God the Creator. Because of its theme, "Caedmon’s Hymn" is often sung on Sundays.?

The translation of the Old English words gives us an idea of both the vocabulary of 1300 years ago and how the people expressed their religious beliefs. I especially love their compound words that are rich in spiritual imagery: “heaven-kingdom,” God’s “mind-plans,” and the “Glory-father.” There’s even a word that will be familiar to Tolkien fans; both Tolkien and the "Beowulf" poet appear to have borrowed it from?Norse mythology.

And I love the fact that the translation is faithful to Old English syntax and does not attempt to follow modern English structure. Even the arrangements of words gives us a window into how people from another time and place thought.

I’m including the Old English text, a translation, and an audio recording of the poem read in a West Saxon dialect.?

Reading this ancient song of praise on the first day of the week has become a new tradition for me. Might be an adventure to learn it -- and the Lord's Prayer -- in Old English this year.

Nū scylun hergan / hefaenrīcaes Uard,

Now we shall honor / Heaven-kingdom's Ward,

metud?s maecti / end his mōdgidanc,

the Measurer's might / and His mind-plans,

uerc Uuldurfadur / suē hē uundra gihuaes,

the work of the Glory-father / as He of each wonder,

ēci dryctin / ōr āstelid?

eternal Lord, / the origin established,

hē ?rist scōp / aelda barnum

He first created / for the children of men

heben til hrōfe, /?hāleg scepen.

Heaven for a roof, / Holy shaper.

Thā middungeard / moncynn?s Uard,

Then Middle-earth / mankind's Ward,

eci Dryctin, / ?fter tīad?

eternal Lord, / after created,

fīrum foldu, ??? Frēa allmectig.

the lands for men, / Lord Almighty.

#sunday #caedmon #saintbede #middleages #beowulf #catholic