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Cleaned up a number of details in this entry. Here's the original for reference: Caedmon is one of only two Anglo-Saxon poets whose names are known. According to Bede, writing in the 7th century, Caedmon was a cow-herd at a Yorkshire monastery, who was unable to sing in public until he miraculously found himself able to sing the Creation, a poem of nine lines. Saint Hilda the abbess of the monastery, encouraged his new calling and asked him to join the monastery. Although many verses have been attributed to Caedmon, the original nine lines of alliterative Old English poetry are the only verses which can reliably be ascribed to him. User:209.89.227.156
I just corrected the text of the poem given in the entry from a West Saxon text to the earliest, M-text--i.e. the one which the entry says is there. But I forgot to log in while doing it, so the edit is not under my name. Just thought I should make it clear who did it. Alarichall ( talk) 19:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Don't know who wrote this article, but they deserve some sort of recognition for one of the best articles I've ever read on Wikipedia. Effortless prose, good sources, and worthy of being a featured article. Fergananim
In the discussion of the proto-Welsh etymology of Cædmon, there is a numeric character reference  which corresponds to Unicode U+F06D. This is part of the "private use area" U+E000 – U+F8FF, which means the character is undefined. It will not display what is intended on any computer other than the original author's, which necessarily uses some custom character sets and fonts. Unless there is some suitable standard Unicode character, the only solution would be to use an image. Unfortunately, it's impossible to guess what glyph is intended (googling "Cædmon + proto-Welsh" only gives Wikipedia mirrors). -- Curps 14:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the original author who inserted this undefined character into the text was the anonymous User:209.107.97.72, so it doesn't seem possible to contact him/her. [1] -- Curps 15:19, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
We allready have a lengthy professional-quality article about the hymn which is integral to the Cædmon article and does not make sense to separate (footnotes, bibliography etc). Cædmon's Hymn was created after this article was created, an article fork, and is a stub. I suggest Cædmon's Hymn redirect to Cædmon - either that or someone create a proper article out of Cædmon's Hymn that is better than the current content in Cædmon - but we cant leave it like it is as a forked article. -- Stbalbach 23:03, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Could the Hymn be called the "oldest surviving written text in English"? -- Stbalbach 06:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Re the material: yes. It is really about the poem, not the poet so I removed the stuff. I was thinking of reviving the Caedmon's Hymn entry with some information about editorial history, competing views of its development, analogues, etc.
I went back through the suggested revisions and made a couple of changes to try and work the ideas in without in my view needlessly complicating things. I hope you don't see this as an edit war! Basically, I think you are probably right that it is a good idea to place it contextually in the general corpus of OE (i.e. among the earliest texts, poetry or prose), but I think it is needlessly complicating things to deal with the claim that it might be the earliest: there are so many provisos and counter examples and the like, that I don't see the point of raising the question only to hedge out of it.
As to herdsman: its kind of the same thing in my view. I'm not sure what the benefit is in going into what kind of herdsman he was. He might have been a general herdsman for all I know (i.e. cows today, sheep tomorrow, or one who dealt with mixed herds, etc.). It seems to me to bring in again a needless complexity that there is no answer for and we then hedge out of. Somebody for whom this is really important (i.e. perhaps for an exegetical reading) is going to need more than an encyclopedia can provide anyway in a biography like this. dpod 18:31, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that an article I created was recently turned into a redirect here, with a main argument in favour being a bogus claim that I was trying to advance some sort of POV. Well, sorry, but all I did was include a piece of information that I believe to be valid (it comes from a reliable source) in an article that should exist, even if I'm not the one to write it. If The Waste Land and Lost in Translation get articles, should one of the oldest and most important poems in the English language not get one too? Could the excess information (that which isn't relevant biographical info on the poet) not be taken out and put into a new article?
(By the way, I don't think I've heard of God being called the "Measurer" anywhere in either the Old or New Testaments. But of course, "hymns" can NEVER have ANYTHING to do with the Fate/Norn that measured the thread...)
Just my two cents... elvenscout742 16:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Measurer (Meotod) is a pretty common epithet for (Christian) God in Old English. And nobody is disputing that the language is not pagan in origin: indeed the whole point of the discussion on the Old CH article (and Green's book, and other works such as Robinsons Beowulf and the Appositive Style) is that CH uses pagan Germanic terminology.
The issue is whether this material is meant in a pagan sense or hides one. And it is extremely hard to argue that about Caedmon's Hymn. There are poems that do retain a sense of the pagan past vs. the Christian present, but CH isn't one of them. There is nothing in the vocabulary for God in CH that is not in keeping with the most run-of-the-mill late OE poetry. In Gothic, you might be able to make the case; in the Dream of the Rood it is an issue; in Beowulf it is as well. But CH shows no sign that C means frea or drihten as anything other than "lord" in the washed out Christian sense that it is found in, for example, the OE translation of the psalms. 209.107.97.72 02:12, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if some readers might find the following format for the hymn and its transliteration into contemporary English easier to follow:
The following text has been transcribed from M (mid-8th century; Northumbria). Text has been normalised to show modern punctuation and line- and word-division:
Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
|
Now must we honour the guardian of heaven, |
Polaris999 07:45, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Congratulations to all the editors who have worked to make Caedmon a featured article. Green Giant 23:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I find it slightly odd that the introduction to this article presents Bede's account of Cædmon's life as though it were reliable and undisputable historical fact. Might it not be sensible to introduce some kind of qualifying "according to Bede" or "according to tradition" into the first paragraph? — Haeleth Talk 09:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I would like to know, is there something about the Christian rock band Caedmon's Call? This band is named after the man who this article is about.-- Chili14 Talk Contribs 00:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't an article with a non-standard character in the title deserve a proper IPA description to help out those who don't know how to pronounce it? freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 04:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Three out of the four sources cited in Note 1 link to nothing. Who are these sources? zafiroblue05 | Talk 05:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Didn't we already feature this article on 9 May 2006? I remember finding out about the article on the main page. JIP | Talk 08:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Between the sections "Sources and Analogues" an "Work" there is a link to "Treehouse of Horror XIII" which obviously doesn't belong. However, I cannot figure out how to remove this.
I notice the ligatures are used in the names but not in Mediæval. Im going to put them in. Cameron Nedland
This image had been in the article, but was removed some weeks ago.
--
Polaris999 16:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Readers are likely to be misled by the caption into thinking the photo shows the ruins of the actual abbey building that Caedmon was associated with. A lot of readers won't realize that the Gothic abbey in the image wasn't even built until several centuries after Caedmon's death. Anyone have a suggestion of a good rewording of the caption? 65.213.77.129 ( talk) 20:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
A date of death of 680 was recently added. Is this well established and accurate? This article was written by a Caedmon scholar and achieved FA status and he never mentioned the date of his death -- where is this date from? -- Stbalbach 14:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I've reversed the date issues: first of all, it was inconsistent with the dating section, and secondly, it is supported only by VERY late evidence. The only contemporary evidence is Bede, and he is unclear. dpod 06:05, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
There's an even more specific date that sometimes gets an airing - 11 February 680. See [2] and similar websites. Do we need to say anything about this, if only to deny there's any historical support for this or any other date? -- JackofOz ( talk) 03:02, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Adding the Anglo-Saxon poets was a good idea, but Caedmon is still widely seen as the first English poet as well. He's on P.1 of the Norton, for example. dpod 06:03, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I've removed the reference to saint. Bede doesn't say he was and suggestions that he was a saint have recently been shown--or at least argued--to be wrong by Eric Stanley in N&Q: Stanley, Eric "St. Caedmon" Notes and Queries 143 (1998): 4-5. dpod 06:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm removing the link to the current on line britannica: seems to have the wrong article.
dpod 03:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Regarding this YouTube video [3]. It is a video advertisement for a new book ( book trailer) which goes against the guidelines of WP:EL. If it can be trimmed out, so only the portion where the hymn is sung, it could be added to the external links section. -- Stbalbach 19:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I endeavoured to follow the audio link currently in the article in order to listen to a reading of Caedmon's Hymn. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player did not recognised the codex. I located a reading by J. B. Bessinger, Jr. @ [4] accessed 20 September 2007. B9 hummingbird hovering ( talk • contribs) 05:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm assuming you are on this one (3 years later oh well)
26 ^ The Norton Online Archive of English Literature, Cædmon's Hymn recorded by Prof. Robert D. Fulk (Indiana University).Online , accessed 26 April 2006.
Link doesn't work at all —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.168.114.86 ( talk) 09:37, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
I am adding a translation from [ [5]] source - it seems to be better than the current \ / ( talk) 02:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to fix up the IPA. I assume that the non-IPA letter [þ] is supposed to be [ð]? If not, please correct me. kwami ( talk) 01:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
In two instances the section titled “Bede's account” seems to depart from the account Bede provides.
1. “Bede's account” calls Caedmon “a lay brother who worked as a herdsman at the monastery,” apparently conflating different parts of Bede's narrative. Bede does indicate that Caedmon was a herdsman, but that seems to have been before he entered the monastery in any capacity. It was only after his life-changing dream that he was invited into the monastery. The Wikipedia article, in contrast, has him already working in the monastery and simply being ordered to take monastic vows after the abbess heard his poems (or hymns, since they were sung).
What Bede tells us is that Caedmon “in habitu seculari” had arrived at a mature age without ever singing a song. While “habitu seculari” might be construed in more than one way, for me the context of the narrative indicates something like “worldly condition” or “secular life.” He may have been working on land owned by the monastery (though Bede does not state that), but there is nothing to indicate that he was working in the monastery itself. On the morning after his dream, remembering everything he had sung, he came to “villicum, qui sibi praeerat,” that is, to a nearby village. It was from there that he was ordered to be taken to the abbess. And when she had heard him sing, “secularem illum habitum relinquere et monachicum suscipere propositum docuit,” where “illum... docuit” means “she instructed him [to].” Again considering context, “secularem...habitum relinquere” would be “to abandon his worldly life.” As for “monachicum suscipere propositum,” that might be rendered “to take up the tasks (or accept the goals) of monastic life” --and maybe Bede does mean “vows” when he writes “propositum” here. In any case, the clause that follows is pretty clear: “susceptumque in monasterium cum omnibus suis fratrum cohorti associavit,” that is, “once he had been accepted into the monastery, she with all her community joined him to the company of brothers” (emphasis added). In short, nothing in the narrative suggests that Caedmon had been a “brother,” lay or otherwise, or part of the monastery community, up until then.
2. The Wikipedia article refers to feasting, singing and harp-playing monks, and this seems to be an innovation. Certainly Bede does not call the companions Caedmon left at the feast monks. This second departure from the source narrative, however, follows readily from the first.
Maybe these discrepancies are only apparent. If so, I would welcome an explanation. Otherwise it seems that “Bede's account” should be corrected so that it accurately represents Bede's account. As a nonspecialist, I would leave that to those better qualified, perhaps participants in one of the relevant Wiki projects. Paleodoc ( talk) 20:57, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
I just added a link to a verse-translation of C.'s hymn. It seemed quite apposite, since there wasn't one already. Szfski ( talk) 10:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
For an undergraduate assignment, myself and two other English majors were charged with finding a Wikipedia page that addressed a topic related to our study of Old and Middle English literature, and then attempting to revise or contribute to it as best we could. When evaluating the page on Cædmon, we all agreed that--even though the piece was well written, researched, documented, and deserving of its stature as a featured Wikipedia article--the page serves mainly as a biography and historical reference page for the poet himself and not necessarily his poetry. We then consulted with other English students who had visited the page in the past in search of information pertaining specifically to Cædmon’s Hymn, and discovered that they too had found the article of little use when it came to the literary study of the Hymn itself. When we consulted with our professor, he too agreed with our observations and we set out to create a new Wikipage that focused specifically on the Hymn itself. Our goal in creating a separate article for the Hymn was to begin the development of a page that would cater to the majority of individuals who would research Cædmon for information pertaining to the actual content and significance of the text he created from a literary standpoint. In the last two weeks that we’ve worked on it, we have attempted to expand on the Hymn’s textual content, structure, verse form, translation process, literary significance, and provided a chart that shows its Old English, Latin, and modern English translations (which was absent from the Cædmon page when we began but has since been added). We had also hoped (but were unable to) provide a more significant amount of material tending to its editorial, publication, and manuscript history (due to time constraints). We were aware of the problems addressed on the discussion board about someone having poorly attempted to create a separate page for the Hymn and it having been removed, but still do not see why a poetic work of such significance to English literature does not deserve its own page if it were properly done. Since encyclopedias are by definition designed to contain an “exhaustive repertory of information on all the branches of some particular art or department of knowledge (Oxford English Dictionary),” and taking into consideration that there are numerous Wikipedia articles which provide biographical information about an author and an overview of their works along with subsidiary wikipages that supply a more in depth analysis of their individual compositions, why there would be any conflict of interest in creating separate pages for Cædmon and his Hymn. In light of the fact that Wikipedia is an online resources that does not have to be concerned with the size and length of its contents as a physical encyclopedia would, why not make it as functional and comprehensive as possible for anyone and everyone who would reference it? Below is a link to a page we created specifically about the Hymn, we are aware of its limitations since we had little time to create it and are inexperienced with using Wikipedia, but we would hope (even if you choose to destroy this article) that anyone who is capable of doing so would help support, and participate in, the creation of a more comprehensive page catering to the literary characteristics and significance that Cædmon’s Hymn deserves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Christian_Hymn
(we are also aware of the inaccuracy of the current title, but when we attempted to publish the page, the system barred us from creating anything that had “Cædmon’s Hymn” in any part of the title) —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaedmonEngLit ( talk • contribs) 05:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
The article that has been written at the above link is excellent, but is an orphan. I think that it should be renamed as Caedmon's Hymn and become the official Caedmon's Hymn article. The reason that the earlier article was deleted was because it was a stub. The article is no longer a stub and should be reinstated. The article on Caedmon himself will still be long enough with only a brief mention of the poem, as Bede's accounts of his life and other material will be sufficient for an article. I recommend that the article above be renamed and linked from the Caedmon article.
--
75.7.227.172 (
talk) 02:39, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
Note: I have done what Keith D suggested above, moving The First Christian Hymn to its proper location, Cædmon's Hymn, which was previously a redirect to this article. In the process, I have merged its history with a few old edits at the Cædmon's Hymn location that were still lying around from before the time it was merged here. I'll leave it to you how to resolve the duplication – some material from this page might need to be shortened to arrive at a proper summary-plus-main-articles structure. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
This Featured article was promoted in 2006, and is not at FA standards. There is a good deal of uncited text, and a MOS review is needed. Unless someone is willing/able to bring this article to standard, it should be submitted to Featured article review. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:09, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Various sources indicate to me that Caedmon is venerated as a popularly-canonized saint in the Catholic Church. I would happily add the saint infobox to the page, but I suspect that starting a discussion is the proper opening move. — Asgardiator 16:54, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
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Cleaned up a number of details in this entry. Here's the original for reference: Caedmon is one of only two Anglo-Saxon poets whose names are known. According to Bede, writing in the 7th century, Caedmon was a cow-herd at a Yorkshire monastery, who was unable to sing in public until he miraculously found himself able to sing the Creation, a poem of nine lines. Saint Hilda the abbess of the monastery, encouraged his new calling and asked him to join the monastery. Although many verses have been attributed to Caedmon, the original nine lines of alliterative Old English poetry are the only verses which can reliably be ascribed to him. User:209.89.227.156
I just corrected the text of the poem given in the entry from a West Saxon text to the earliest, M-text--i.e. the one which the entry says is there. But I forgot to log in while doing it, so the edit is not under my name. Just thought I should make it clear who did it. Alarichall ( talk) 19:55, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
Don't know who wrote this article, but they deserve some sort of recognition for one of the best articles I've ever read on Wikipedia. Effortless prose, good sources, and worthy of being a featured article. Fergananim
In the discussion of the proto-Welsh etymology of Cædmon, there is a numeric character reference  which corresponds to Unicode U+F06D. This is part of the "private use area" U+E000 – U+F8FF, which means the character is undefined. It will not display what is intended on any computer other than the original author's, which necessarily uses some custom character sets and fonts. Unless there is some suitable standard Unicode character, the only solution would be to use an image. Unfortunately, it's impossible to guess what glyph is intended (googling "Cædmon + proto-Welsh" only gives Wikipedia mirrors). -- Curps 14:58, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the original author who inserted this undefined character into the text was the anonymous User:209.107.97.72, so it doesn't seem possible to contact him/her. [1] -- Curps 15:19, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
We allready have a lengthy professional-quality article about the hymn which is integral to the Cædmon article and does not make sense to separate (footnotes, bibliography etc). Cædmon's Hymn was created after this article was created, an article fork, and is a stub. I suggest Cædmon's Hymn redirect to Cædmon - either that or someone create a proper article out of Cædmon's Hymn that is better than the current content in Cædmon - but we cant leave it like it is as a forked article. -- Stbalbach 23:03, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Could the Hymn be called the "oldest surviving written text in English"? -- Stbalbach 06:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Re the material: yes. It is really about the poem, not the poet so I removed the stuff. I was thinking of reviving the Caedmon's Hymn entry with some information about editorial history, competing views of its development, analogues, etc.
I went back through the suggested revisions and made a couple of changes to try and work the ideas in without in my view needlessly complicating things. I hope you don't see this as an edit war! Basically, I think you are probably right that it is a good idea to place it contextually in the general corpus of OE (i.e. among the earliest texts, poetry or prose), but I think it is needlessly complicating things to deal with the claim that it might be the earliest: there are so many provisos and counter examples and the like, that I don't see the point of raising the question only to hedge out of it.
As to herdsman: its kind of the same thing in my view. I'm not sure what the benefit is in going into what kind of herdsman he was. He might have been a general herdsman for all I know (i.e. cows today, sheep tomorrow, or one who dealt with mixed herds, etc.). It seems to me to bring in again a needless complexity that there is no answer for and we then hedge out of. Somebody for whom this is really important (i.e. perhaps for an exegetical reading) is going to need more than an encyclopedia can provide anyway in a biography like this. dpod 18:31, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
I noticed that an article I created was recently turned into a redirect here, with a main argument in favour being a bogus claim that I was trying to advance some sort of POV. Well, sorry, but all I did was include a piece of information that I believe to be valid (it comes from a reliable source) in an article that should exist, even if I'm not the one to write it. If The Waste Land and Lost in Translation get articles, should one of the oldest and most important poems in the English language not get one too? Could the excess information (that which isn't relevant biographical info on the poet) not be taken out and put into a new article?
(By the way, I don't think I've heard of God being called the "Measurer" anywhere in either the Old or New Testaments. But of course, "hymns" can NEVER have ANYTHING to do with the Fate/Norn that measured the thread...)
Just my two cents... elvenscout742 16:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Measurer (Meotod) is a pretty common epithet for (Christian) God in Old English. And nobody is disputing that the language is not pagan in origin: indeed the whole point of the discussion on the Old CH article (and Green's book, and other works such as Robinsons Beowulf and the Appositive Style) is that CH uses pagan Germanic terminology.
The issue is whether this material is meant in a pagan sense or hides one. And it is extremely hard to argue that about Caedmon's Hymn. There are poems that do retain a sense of the pagan past vs. the Christian present, but CH isn't one of them. There is nothing in the vocabulary for God in CH that is not in keeping with the most run-of-the-mill late OE poetry. In Gothic, you might be able to make the case; in the Dream of the Rood it is an issue; in Beowulf it is as well. But CH shows no sign that C means frea or drihten as anything other than "lord" in the washed out Christian sense that it is found in, for example, the OE translation of the psalms. 209.107.97.72 02:12, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
I wonder if some readers might find the following format for the hymn and its transliteration into contemporary English easier to follow:
The following text has been transcribed from M (mid-8th century; Northumbria). Text has been normalised to show modern punctuation and line- and word-division:
Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
|
Now must we honour the guardian of heaven, |
Polaris999 07:45, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Congratulations to all the editors who have worked to make Caedmon a featured article. Green Giant 23:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
I find it slightly odd that the introduction to this article presents Bede's account of Cædmon's life as though it were reliable and undisputable historical fact. Might it not be sensible to introduce some kind of qualifying "according to Bede" or "according to tradition" into the first paragraph? — Haeleth Talk 09:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I would like to know, is there something about the Christian rock band Caedmon's Call? This band is named after the man who this article is about.-- Chili14 Talk Contribs 00:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Doesn't an article with a non-standard character in the title deserve a proper IPA description to help out those who don't know how to pronounce it? freshofftheufo ΓΛĿЌ 04:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Three out of the four sources cited in Note 1 link to nothing. Who are these sources? zafiroblue05 | Talk 05:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Didn't we already feature this article on 9 May 2006? I remember finding out about the article on the main page. JIP | Talk 08:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Between the sections "Sources and Analogues" an "Work" there is a link to "Treehouse of Horror XIII" which obviously doesn't belong. However, I cannot figure out how to remove this.
I notice the ligatures are used in the names but not in Mediæval. Im going to put them in. Cameron Nedland
This image had been in the article, but was removed some weeks ago.
--
Polaris999 16:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Readers are likely to be misled by the caption into thinking the photo shows the ruins of the actual abbey building that Caedmon was associated with. A lot of readers won't realize that the Gothic abbey in the image wasn't even built until several centuries after Caedmon's death. Anyone have a suggestion of a good rewording of the caption? 65.213.77.129 ( talk) 20:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
A date of death of 680 was recently added. Is this well established and accurate? This article was written by a Caedmon scholar and achieved FA status and he never mentioned the date of his death -- where is this date from? -- Stbalbach 14:52, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I've reversed the date issues: first of all, it was inconsistent with the dating section, and secondly, it is supported only by VERY late evidence. The only contemporary evidence is Bede, and he is unclear. dpod 06:05, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
There's an even more specific date that sometimes gets an airing - 11 February 680. See [2] and similar websites. Do we need to say anything about this, if only to deny there's any historical support for this or any other date? -- JackofOz ( talk) 03:02, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
Adding the Anglo-Saxon poets was a good idea, but Caedmon is still widely seen as the first English poet as well. He's on P.1 of the Norton, for example. dpod 06:03, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I've removed the reference to saint. Bede doesn't say he was and suggestions that he was a saint have recently been shown--or at least argued--to be wrong by Eric Stanley in N&Q: Stanley, Eric "St. Caedmon" Notes and Queries 143 (1998): 4-5. dpod 06:07, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm removing the link to the current on line britannica: seems to have the wrong article.
dpod 03:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Regarding this YouTube video [3]. It is a video advertisement for a new book ( book trailer) which goes against the guidelines of WP:EL. If it can be trimmed out, so only the portion where the hymn is sung, it could be added to the external links section. -- Stbalbach 19:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I endeavoured to follow the audio link currently in the article in order to listen to a reading of Caedmon's Hymn. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player did not recognised the codex. I located a reading by J. B. Bessinger, Jr. @ [4] accessed 20 September 2007. B9 hummingbird hovering ( talk • contribs) 05:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm assuming you are on this one (3 years later oh well)
26 ^ The Norton Online Archive of English Literature, Cædmon's Hymn recorded by Prof. Robert D. Fulk (Indiana University).Online , accessed 26 April 2006.
Link doesn't work at all —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.168.114.86 ( talk) 09:37, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
I am adding a translation from [ [5]] source - it seems to be better than the current \ / ( talk) 02:44, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to fix up the IPA. I assume that the non-IPA letter [þ] is supposed to be [ð]? If not, please correct me. kwami ( talk) 01:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
In two instances the section titled “Bede's account” seems to depart from the account Bede provides.
1. “Bede's account” calls Caedmon “a lay brother who worked as a herdsman at the monastery,” apparently conflating different parts of Bede's narrative. Bede does indicate that Caedmon was a herdsman, but that seems to have been before he entered the monastery in any capacity. It was only after his life-changing dream that he was invited into the monastery. The Wikipedia article, in contrast, has him already working in the monastery and simply being ordered to take monastic vows after the abbess heard his poems (or hymns, since they were sung).
What Bede tells us is that Caedmon “in habitu seculari” had arrived at a mature age without ever singing a song. While “habitu seculari” might be construed in more than one way, for me the context of the narrative indicates something like “worldly condition” or “secular life.” He may have been working on land owned by the monastery (though Bede does not state that), but there is nothing to indicate that he was working in the monastery itself. On the morning after his dream, remembering everything he had sung, he came to “villicum, qui sibi praeerat,” that is, to a nearby village. It was from there that he was ordered to be taken to the abbess. And when she had heard him sing, “secularem illum habitum relinquere et monachicum suscipere propositum docuit,” where “illum... docuit” means “she instructed him [to].” Again considering context, “secularem...habitum relinquere” would be “to abandon his worldly life.” As for “monachicum suscipere propositum,” that might be rendered “to take up the tasks (or accept the goals) of monastic life” --and maybe Bede does mean “vows” when he writes “propositum” here. In any case, the clause that follows is pretty clear: “susceptumque in monasterium cum omnibus suis fratrum cohorti associavit,” that is, “once he had been accepted into the monastery, she with all her community joined him to the company of brothers” (emphasis added). In short, nothing in the narrative suggests that Caedmon had been a “brother,” lay or otherwise, or part of the monastery community, up until then.
2. The Wikipedia article refers to feasting, singing and harp-playing monks, and this seems to be an innovation. Certainly Bede does not call the companions Caedmon left at the feast monks. This second departure from the source narrative, however, follows readily from the first.
Maybe these discrepancies are only apparent. If so, I would welcome an explanation. Otherwise it seems that “Bede's account” should be corrected so that it accurately represents Bede's account. As a nonspecialist, I would leave that to those better qualified, perhaps participants in one of the relevant Wiki projects. Paleodoc ( talk) 20:57, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
I just added a link to a verse-translation of C.'s hymn. It seemed quite apposite, since there wasn't one already. Szfski ( talk) 10:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
For an undergraduate assignment, myself and two other English majors were charged with finding a Wikipedia page that addressed a topic related to our study of Old and Middle English literature, and then attempting to revise or contribute to it as best we could. When evaluating the page on Cædmon, we all agreed that--even though the piece was well written, researched, documented, and deserving of its stature as a featured Wikipedia article--the page serves mainly as a biography and historical reference page for the poet himself and not necessarily his poetry. We then consulted with other English students who had visited the page in the past in search of information pertaining specifically to Cædmon’s Hymn, and discovered that they too had found the article of little use when it came to the literary study of the Hymn itself. When we consulted with our professor, he too agreed with our observations and we set out to create a new Wikipage that focused specifically on the Hymn itself. Our goal in creating a separate article for the Hymn was to begin the development of a page that would cater to the majority of individuals who would research Cædmon for information pertaining to the actual content and significance of the text he created from a literary standpoint. In the last two weeks that we’ve worked on it, we have attempted to expand on the Hymn’s textual content, structure, verse form, translation process, literary significance, and provided a chart that shows its Old English, Latin, and modern English translations (which was absent from the Cædmon page when we began but has since been added). We had also hoped (but were unable to) provide a more significant amount of material tending to its editorial, publication, and manuscript history (due to time constraints). We were aware of the problems addressed on the discussion board about someone having poorly attempted to create a separate page for the Hymn and it having been removed, but still do not see why a poetic work of such significance to English literature does not deserve its own page if it were properly done. Since encyclopedias are by definition designed to contain an “exhaustive repertory of information on all the branches of some particular art or department of knowledge (Oxford English Dictionary),” and taking into consideration that there are numerous Wikipedia articles which provide biographical information about an author and an overview of their works along with subsidiary wikipages that supply a more in depth analysis of their individual compositions, why there would be any conflict of interest in creating separate pages for Cædmon and his Hymn. In light of the fact that Wikipedia is an online resources that does not have to be concerned with the size and length of its contents as a physical encyclopedia would, why not make it as functional and comprehensive as possible for anyone and everyone who would reference it? Below is a link to a page we created specifically about the Hymn, we are aware of its limitations since we had little time to create it and are inexperienced with using Wikipedia, but we would hope (even if you choose to destroy this article) that anyone who is capable of doing so would help support, and participate in, the creation of a more comprehensive page catering to the literary characteristics and significance that Cædmon’s Hymn deserves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Christian_Hymn
(we are also aware of the inaccuracy of the current title, but when we attempted to publish the page, the system barred us from creating anything that had “Cædmon’s Hymn” in any part of the title) —Preceding unsigned comment added by CaedmonEngLit ( talk • contribs) 05:44, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
The article that has been written at the above link is excellent, but is an orphan. I think that it should be renamed as Caedmon's Hymn and become the official Caedmon's Hymn article. The reason that the earlier article was deleted was because it was a stub. The article is no longer a stub and should be reinstated. The article on Caedmon himself will still be long enough with only a brief mention of the poem, as Bede's accounts of his life and other material will be sufficient for an article. I recommend that the article above be renamed and linked from the Caedmon article.
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75.7.227.172 (
talk) 02:39, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
Note: I have done what Keith D suggested above, moving The First Christian Hymn to its proper location, Cædmon's Hymn, which was previously a redirect to this article. In the process, I have merged its history with a few old edits at the Cædmon's Hymn location that were still lying around from before the time it was merged here. I'll leave it to you how to resolve the duplication – some material from this page might need to be shortened to arrive at a proper summary-plus-main-articles structure. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
This Featured article was promoted in 2006, and is not at FA standards. There is a good deal of uncited text, and a MOS review is needed. Unless someone is willing/able to bring this article to standard, it should be submitted to Featured article review. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:09, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Various sources indicate to me that Caedmon is venerated as a popularly-canonized saint in the Catholic Church. I would happily add the saint infobox to the page, but I suspect that starting a discussion is the proper opening move. — Asgardiator 16:54, 15 July 2022 (UTC)