Talk:Cædmon

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Contents

[edit] Editing

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

eplaced text with more detailed account. Incidentally fixed a number of small errors: number of manuscripts, number of named Anglo-Saxon poets, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.107.97.72 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Featured article recommendation

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

To echo that, yeah, I came across this just now and I was very impressed. Great stuff. [User:Everyking|Everyking]] 08:41, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Undefined character &# 61549

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)

The transcription of Welsh from any period will only require those characters properly defined by Unicode. There will be absolutely no need to use this character. The supplemenatary private use area does not have any universally assigned characters, so its use is not appropriate on Wikipedia. Gareth Hughes 17:06, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
Fortunately, whoever added that cited his sources. I have Jackson 1953 on my shelf; the symbol in question is supposed to be the Greek letter mu (μ), whose entity code is μ (U+3BC), so I don't know how he got  out of that (at first I thought it must have just been a slip of the fingers). Jackson uses μ to stand for a nasalized labiodental or bilabial fricative, for which the symbol ṽ is more intuitive, so I'm replacing it with that instead. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 19:15, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
The mystery is solved thanks to nl: Wikipedia user nl:Gebruiker:Gpvos. It's from the Monotype Symbol font of groff, and the mappings can be found by looking for the file 'font/devlj4/generate/symbol.map' (some copies can be found by Googling on this + "groff". F06D is indeed mapped to U+03BC mu, and various other characters between F021 and F0FE are also mapped. This will be useful to know if future cases of private-use characters are found, although not all these cases will use a groff mapping. -- Curps 01:12, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Symbol isn't groff-specific, it's a common font included with almost every operating system. In particular, I see it used a lot by Windows users to represent Greek, because it's easy to type (a becomes alpha and so on). So-called symbol or dingbat fonts in Windows have their characters in the private use area because they don't represent normal text (Symbol being a holdover from the pre-Unicode days). I think the most likely cause was that someone copied and pasted the article into Microsoft Word in order to edit it, added a mu with the Symbol font, then copied and pasted it back into Wikipedia, which lost the font information. DopefishJustin 23:33, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I am really impressed with the detail here. This guy knows what he is talking about. Excellent research, depth and referencing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.144.5.55 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Merge Cædmon's Hymn into Cædmon

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)

[edit] Oldest written English text

Could the Hymn be called the "oldest surviving written text in English"? -- Stbalbach 06:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably not. Off the top of my head, I think the corpus glosses are at least as old, and there may be monuments I don't know of. I looked that up one time, and was disappointed, since I wanted it to be.
It might be the earliest *attested* poetry, however (others must have been compsed earlier). The only real contender, I think, is the Ruthwell inscription: it is either contemporaneous with the cross, in which case it is probably earlier, or it is much later in which case Caedmon wins. When I was working with Caedmon, I favoured a later date for Ruthwell. Now I'm working on the Ruthwell, my colleagues are gradually wearing me down ;) -d
Ok I made a couple clarifications on the herdsman and oldest text, to help with popular perceptions that may come back later and haunt the article. I also clarified "English" because I think a lot of people won't associate English as a Germanic language. BTW did you mean to delete all that material? -- Stbalbach 16:03, 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 assumed "herdsman" meant "cows" (the herdsmen link goes to "cowboy"), so will someone else. Was he a cowboy? That's what the article is currently saying. As for the oldest text stuff, this is also commonly thought to be so, why can't we clarify the issues surrounding that belief? Also, I disagree with splitting the article -- why? He only has a single work, it's difficult to speak about him without also discussing the poem, the article is more coherent as a single entity. It also seems odd to do it right in the middle of a FAC vote when it's been otherwise stable for a long time. Anyway, it's your article, do as you want, these are just suggestions. -- Stbalbach 19:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Separate article for hymn...

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)

Well, I was not arguing that. I just think that the Hymn is an important piece of literature and deserves its own article. elvenscout742 18:35, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually you were and you have been. You suggest that you have ever heard of God being called the Measurer and then, satirically, add "But of course, "hymns" can NEVER have ANYTHING to do with the Fate/Norn that measured the thread...)". You have also repeatedly argued that there is some kind of pagan language in CH as if a) this is not common knowledge, and b) as if this is in some way significant for our understanding of the Hymn. The problem with this argument is a) that CH's pagan vocabulary is completely common knowledge-indeed a critical commonplace--and b) that there is NO evidence in primary or commonly cited secondary sources to suggest that Caedmon is anything other than stereotypical in his vocabulary. Given that this is a well studied topic, it seems to me that there is a duty to actually place one's ideas in the secondary lit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.107.97.72 (talk • contribs)
Look, I'm not here to get into a fight with anyone, particularly an Anon who persists in making personal attacks and bad faith remarks, and is too narrow-minded to accept that (s)he may have made an error in judgement. YOU brought the paganism thing into this, and have not addressed the fundamental issue in my comment at all (being that the poem should have its own article, this article containing information that could be moved, etc...). But while we're on the subject, I assume the above post is accusing me of some sort of original research, referring to the allegation of not citing any previously published "secondary lit". This is nonsense, as I very clearly cited "Branston, Brian (1994). The Lost Gods of England (New Edition) Constable and Robinson. ISBN 0094733406", which was cleverly left out of the almost unilateral "discussion" on whether the article should be deleted without consulting me or even mentioning me as anything other than "the person" and "someone". elvenscout742 21:56, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
First of all, I'm 209.107.97.72. Mea culpa that I didn't sign the articles; it was largely a function of me not checking the "remember me on this computer" box.
Secondly, Caedmon's Hymn might well deserve a separate article (myself, I've written a whole book on it), but not because it might be pagan in some way. I frankly don't care if it is or isn't. What I do care about, in an encyclopedia, is that articles reflect mainstream views. You'll notice, for example, that I don't argue my own, as yet non-mainstream, views as to the poem's textual development in the main text, even though I think they are right. Brian Branston, The Lost Gods of England is not a mainstream source for knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England, or, particularly, Caedmon's Hymn. How do I know this? Well, among other reasons, because the pagan language of CH has been extremely well studied in secondary literature going back to Green in the 1960s at least. The observation that Caedmon is using originally pagan language is even earlier, and has been the focus of a number of studies, including Robinson's Beowulf and the Appositive Style, and even Smith's 3 Northumbrian Poems (1937).
Thirdly, you have consistently brought paganism into this. Look at your initial entry in this thread:
(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...)
I think any reasonable person would assume that your point is a reductio ad absurdum directed against anybody who argues that "meotod" is a Christian term in Old English (If your second sentence in the above is not ironic, then I apologise). But the problem is that you are demonstrably wrong, at least in Old English, where drihten, meotod, frea, and a number of other originally pagan words are famously used in almost exclusively Christian contexts. And that this has been extremely well studied, to the point of being a truism. Finding some book that apparently doesn't deal with the well known evidence is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Citing secondary sources means dealing with the whole field.
I said above that I couldn't care less if CH turned out to be a pagan ode--though it would a field shattering discovery--and that is true. Of course we are hindered by the tertiary nature of an encyclopedia. But if we can show that CH's content is anyway intended to be understood as a reference to Norn, then let's do it. The test, however, is that that this research must *deal with the standard view* of CH and *show that this standard view is wrong*. I.e. it must be situated in the scholarship. And you can say what you want: the question of pagan language in CH has been studied for nigh on 100 years without any serious argument being made that the poem itself is not almost stereotypically Christian. If you can show this is wrong, I'd say write a book rather than a Wikipedia article.
So sure, go ahead and start a new entry on the Hymn itself. But let's not have a six month old stub insinuating something very poorly supported about its pagan nature. dpod 04:33, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
IMO< I'd rather see a published expert on the Hymn write the Wikipedia article on the Hymn -- it seems like it's allready been done in this Featured Article -- elvenscout742, if it "deserves" its own article or not is academic. The question is, do we allready have a decent Encyclopedic entry for it on Wikipedia without creating a content fork? What do you think? -- Stbalbach 05:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Concerning the suggestion by User:elvenscout742 "being that the poem should have its own article, this article containing information that could be moved", I feel very strongly that since Cædmon has been promoted to Featured Article status as currently structured, it would be inappropriate for anyone to remove any information from it. A "child article", if User:elvenscout742 feels compelled to create one about the poem, would be permitted to duplicate some of the material in the "parent article" (in this case, Cædmon), although obviously the amount of such duplicated material should constitute only a small percentage of its text.
Also, I support the above comment by Stbalbach. Polaris999 05:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative format for the hymn

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
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc
uerc uuldurfadur— sue he uundra gihuaes
eci dryctin or astelidæ

he aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe haleg scepen
tha middungeard moncynnæs uard
eci dryctin æfter tiadæ
firum foldu frea allmectig

Now must we honour the guardian of heaven,
the might of the architect, and his purpose,
the work of the father of glory[34] — as he, the eternal lord, established the beginning of wonders.

He first created heaven as a roof
for the children of men.[35]
Then the guardian of mankind, the eternal lord,
afterwards appointed the middle earth,
the lands, for men: he, almighty god.[36]

Polaris999 07:45, 2 April 2006 (UTC)


The current display in the article is very difficult to follow. A side-by-side text of original and translation with each line intact such as you have done would be vastly preferred. In my very humble opinion, each line in modern English should mirror the Old English as closely as possible. This would mean an almost word-for-word translation. Moreover, in this modern age, there's no real reason not to present all the versions extant which could be done in a separate article, as suggested in the section above. I don't happen to have access to all twenty-plus versions at the moment and apparently there is some disagreement about the importance of a separate article like that, however. Nodoremi 08:24, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
On the multiple versions, this is what Wikisource is for. Short texts are sometimes ok in Wikipedia (in particular with commentary), but Wikisource is used for archiving primary source texts. -- Stbalbach 16:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! I was unaware of it. What a great thing.Nodoremi 17:21, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
In any case it would be a good idea to use a line-for-line translation. Nodoremi 23:15, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Featured article

Congratulations to all the editors who have worked to make Caedmon a featured article. Green Giant 23:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historicity

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 think it's a given that a 8th century source is not the same as a 21st century source, this is true in every medieval article on Wikipedia.. adding qualifiers like "according to tradition" adds an unknown element for the reader, as if there is debate about the accuracy of the account, that there may be factual reason to doubt Bede, contradictory evidence. Also it does say "His story is told to us in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("History of the English church") by St. Bede". -- Stbalbach 12:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caedmon's Call

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.--Chili14TalkContribs 00:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IPA pron

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?  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  04:04, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I tried my hardest to write up the pronunciation for Ca--edmon, but I'm no linguistic specialist: just a part-time participant. I would appreciate corrections. --This1trik4u 05:54, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
I fixed this one up. I believe it is now correct for Anglo-Saxon. --Oldak Quill 11:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Note 1

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)


They aren't sources, they are names. If you read the note, You will see it begins "The twelve named Anglo-Saxon poets are..." This is then followed by names. The references are all blue. dpod 04:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
My apologies. I've added the missing references.dpod 04:26, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article already featured?

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)

The main page FA for 9 May 2006 was Pink Floyd; looking at the history of bolding of articles on Wikipedia:Featured articles, I did not see any evidence that this article already got featured in the past. Schutz 09:09, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
According to the edit history, I edited it on May 9 to put in Category:Digimon. I don't know anything about English historical poets so I can't have heard of Cædmon on my own. I must have seen a link to it in some prominent place in Wikipedia. JIP | Talk 10:46, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
It was on FAC in May, if that helps. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:46, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inappropriate link

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.

[edit] Ligatures

I notice the ligatures are used in the names but not in Mediæval. Im going to put them in. Cameron Nedland

[edit] A Photograph of Whitby Abbey

Image:Whitby Abbey by Dr Vess.jpg
The famous view from the east end of the Abbey.

This image had been in the article, but was removed some weeks ago.
-- Polaris999 16:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes - I think that was me. That image is copyright and fair use, and I was not convinced of the rationale for it in an article on Cædmon when there are free-use images available. (A better free one would be nice, of course.) -- ALoan (Talk) 16:39, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Here is a link to the photograph in question, in case anyone wishes to see it: Whitby Abbey by Dr. Vess
-- Polaris999 05:14, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Date of death 680

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 think that it is well accepted that the exact date of Cædmon's death is not known, although there seems to be agreement that he died in or before 680 (as the memorial cross records). I therefore consider the insertion of "680" as his date of death wholly inappropriate, and am in agreement with you that if User:Daniel.odonnell had thought the date of Cædmon's death was known, he would have included it in the article. In any case, I hope that User:Walgamanus will share with the rest of us the reason why he made the change in question ... -- Polaris999 04:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
My own view is that this is too specific. All we know is that Caedmon was active during Hild's Abbacy (i.e. upto 680 [there is a mistake that puts it at 681, throughout). Otherwise it is largely guesswork. As it says in the dating section: "Taken together, this evidence suggests an active period beginning between 657 and 680 and ending between 679 and 684." But to be honest, "alive during Hild's Abbacy" would be the narrowest unobjectionable time frame: we really can't get any closer.
The thing you have to remember is that we know nothing about him other than what Bede says and Bede doesn't give a solid date: he begins the chapter by saying caedmon lived in "the monastery of this abbess" (the last monastery mentioned was Whitby, in the preceding chapter where Hilda's death is recorded), and he begins the next chapter by placing the fire at Coldingham monastery as "about this time". We can date the fire more or less (though Bede seems to have dated it differently), but it isn't clear at either the beginning or end of the chapter exactly how closely together Bede is dating the events. Some people argue (e.g. Dumville), since Hilda isn't mentioned by name in the chapter, that Bede isn't even dating Caedmon to her time. My own feeling is that he means "roughly around the time of Caedmon the following events took place at Coldingham" and that Caedmon lived and was interviewed by Hilda when he was already an old man. That's why I said his time of activity included the later part of Hilda's time at the least. But I couldn't rule out that he began towards the beginning of her time, or that he lived past her death. "was active sometime during the time of Hild" is about the only certain(-ish) thing.
209.107.111.138 05:46, 19 October 2006 (UTC) (I see I haven't signed in: Dan O'Donnell).

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)

Sorry about that. Thanks for clearing it up. Walgamanus 08:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] English/Anglo-Saxon poets

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)

[edit] Categorties: Saints, etc

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've been tidying up the Anglo-Saxon categories, hence the recent movements on this front. I have removed Caedmon from Anglo-Saxon people, because all A-S people have now been put into appropriate sub-categories, in this case Anglo-Saxon poets. I'm not all that happy with leaving him in English poets, but if people will expect to find him there, then he'd better stay in. Along the same lines, although probably not a saint, users may be confused if he is not listed in the A-S saints category. I have therefore reinstated this, while adding the info concerning the unlikelihood of his saintliness to the article itself. I hope this is acceptable to everyone. Walgamanus 08:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
Good point. dpod 00:44, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Britannica

I'm removing the link to the current on line britannica: seems to have the wrong article.

dpod 03:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] YouTube video

Regarding this YouTube video [2]. 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)

[edit] Audio of Caedmon's Hymn

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. @ [3] accessed 20 September 2007. B9 hummingbird hovering (talk • contribs) 05:21, 20 September 2007 (UTC)