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Caedmon's Hymn: the First English Poem in a Modern English Translation

What is the oldest poem in the English language?

"Caedmon's Hymn" was probably composed sometime between 658 and 680 AD and appears to be the English language's oldest extant (surviving) poem. That makes it older than Beowulf, as far as we know. According to the Venerable Bede (673-735), Cædmon was an illiterate herdsman who was given the gift of poetic composition by an angel. In the original poem, hardly a word is recognizable as English because Cædmon was writing in a somewhat anglicized form of ancient German. The word "England" harkens back to Angle-land; the Angles were a Germanic tribe, as were the Saxons and Jutes. Nevertheless, by Caedmon's time the foundations of English poetry were being laid, particularly in the areas of accentual meter and alliteration. Anglo-Saxon poets, called "scops," were considered to be "makers" (as in William Dunbar's poem "Lament for the Makaris"), and poetry was considered to have a divine origin, so Caedmon's poem may express a sort of affinity between the poet and his God.

Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Humbly now we honour      heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
the Measurer's might       and his mind-plans,
the goals of the Glory-Father.     First he, the Everlasting Lord,
established      earth's fearful foundations.
Then he, the First Scop,      hoisted heaven as a roof
for the sons of men:      Holy Creator,
mankind's great Maker!      Then he, the Ever-Living Lord,
afterwards made men middle-earth:      Master Almighty!

Other Anglo-Saxon/Old English poems: The Ruin, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife's Lament, Deor's Lament, Caedmon's Hymn, Bede's Death Song, The Seafarer, The Rhyming Poem, Anglo-Saxon Riddles and Kennings



Translator's Notes

"Cædmon's Hymn" is one of the oldest surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. Below, I have indicated the alliteration in my translation, with underscores:

Humbly now we honour      heaven-kingdom's Guardian, [n, h, g, d]
the Measurer's might       and his mind-plans, [m, a]
the goals of the Glory-Father.      First he, the Everlasting Lord, [g, f, l]
established      earth's fearful foundations. [d, e, s, f]
Then he, the First Scop,      hoisted heaven as a roof [h, e, s, a]
for the sons of men,      Holy Creator, [e, s, r]
mankind's great Maker!      Then he, the Ever-Living Lord, [m, n, e, l]
afterwards made men middle-earth:      Master Almighty! [m, t, r]

In defense of my interpretation that Caedmon may have regarded God as a fellow Poet-Creator, I will point out that the original poem employs the words scop and haleg scepen. Anglo-Saxon poets were called scops. The term haleg scepen seems to mean something like "Holy Poet" or "Holy Creator/Maker" because poets were considered to be creators and makers. Also the verb tīadæ has been said to mean something like "creatively adorned." So I don't think it's that much of a stretch to suggest that a Christian poet may have seen his small act of creation as an imitation of the far greater acts of creation of his Heavenly Father.

As in the original poem, each line of my translation has a caesura: a brief pause denoted by white space. In each line, there are repeated vowel/consonant sounds. This alliteration gives alliterative verse its name. The original poem is also accentual verse, in that each line has four strong stresses, and the less-stressed syllables are not counted as they are in most other forms of English meter (such as iambic pentameter). My translation is not completely faithful to the original rules. For instance, I have employed a considerable amount of internal alliteration (which gives me more flexibility in the words I can employ). And some of my lines contain more than four stresses, although I think there are still four dominant stresses per line. For instance, in the first line: HONour, HEAVen, KINGdom's GUARDian. In the second line: MEASurer's, MIGHT, MIND-PLANS. And so on. I don't think the technique is all-important. The main questions are whether the meaning is clear, and whether the words please the ear. Only you, the reader, can decide that, and you don't need a high-falutin' critic to tell you what you like!

I believe the poem is "biblical" in its vision of creation. According to the Bible, the earth was set on an immovable foundation by the hand of God. (Little did the ancient writers know that the earth is actually a spinning globe whizzing through space at phenomenal speeds!) We see this foundation in line four. Next, in line five, we see the hand of God creating the heavens above, where according to the Bible he then set the sun, moon and stars in place. (The ancient writers again got things wrong, saying that the earth existed first, in darkness, and that the sun, moon and stars were created later; we now know that the earth's heavier elements were created in the hearts of stars, so the stars existed long before the earth. The writers of Genesis even said that plants grew before the sun was formed, but of course they had never heard of photosynthesis.) The poem's last line sounds a bit more Germanic or Norse to me, since Middle Earth is a concept we hear in tales of Odin and Thor (and later in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien). But that makes sense because when Saint Augustine of Canterbury became the first Christian missionary to evangelize native Britons, I believe it was the policy of the Roman Catholic Church to incorporate local beliefs into the practice of Christianity. For instance, because sun gods were worshiped in Rome, the Sabbath day became Sun-day, and the birth of Christ became December the 25th (the day the winter sun is "resurrected" and the days begin to lengthen, heralding spring). So in northern climes we would expect to see some "fusion" of Norse and Germanic myths with Christianity. For instance, there was never a mention of "hell" in the Hebrew Bible; the Hebrew language did not even have a word that meant "hell" at the time the books of the Old Testament were written. The closest Hebrew word, Sheol, clearly means "the grave" and everyone went there when they died, good and bad. The Greek word Hades also means the grave, and likewise everyone went there when they died. Hades had heavenly regions like the Elysian Fields and Blessed Isles and thus was obviously not hell! "Hell" is a Norse term. If this subject interests you―for instance if someone has said you are in danger of "hell" and need to be "saved" from it―you many want to read my simple, logical proof that There Is No Hell in the Bible.

Here is the original Old English/Anglo-Saxon poem and a word-by-word literal translation:

Nū scylun hergan            hefaenrīcaes Uard,
Now let's honor              heaven's Guardian

metudæs maecti                end his mōdgidanc,
(the) measurer's might       and his mode/method to-be-thanked-for/praised

uerc Uuldurfadur,                         suē hē uundra gihwaes,
(the) work (of the) Glory-Father   and his wonders praiseworthy (which)

ēci dryctin                 ōr āstelidæ
(the) Eternal Lord     established in the beginning.

hē ǣrist scōp                               aelda barnum
He first (poetically) created  (for) people-children/the sons of men

heben til hrōfe,     hāleg scepen.
heaven as roof     (our) holy creator/poet!

Thā middungeard      moncynnæs Uard,
Then middle-earth     mankind's Guardian

eci Dryctin,             æfter tīadæ
(our) eternal Lord   afterwards creatively adorned (with)

firum foldu,           Frēa allmectig.
firm earth     (our) Father almighty!

Here's a slightly less literal translation that still seems faithful to the original poem:

Cædmon's Hymn (circa 658-680 AD)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Humbly let us honour          heaven-kingdom’s Guardian,
the Measurer's might          and his mind-plans:
the goals of the Glory-Father.          First he, the Eternal Lord,
eminently established               earth’s fearful foundations.
Then he, the First Scop,          hoisted heaven as a roof
for the sons of men:          Holy Creator,
Maker of mankind.          Then he, the Ever-Living Lord,
afterwards made men middle-earth:          Master Almighty!

Other Anglo-Saxon/Old English poems: The Ruin, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Wife's Lament, Deor's Lament, Caedmon's Hymn, Bede's Death Song, The Seafarer, Anglo-Saxon Riddles and Kennings



The following are links to other translations by Michael R. Burch:

The Seafarer
Wulf and Eadwacer
Adam Lay Ybounden
The Love Song of Shu-Sin: The Earth's Oldest Love Poem?
Sweet Rose of Virtue
How Long the Night
Caedmon's Hymn
The Rhyming Poem
Anglo-Saxon Riddles and Kennings
Bede's Death Song
The Wife's Lament
Deor's Lament
Lament for the Makaris
Tegner's Drapa
Alexander Pushkin's tender, touching poem "I Love You" has been translated into English by Michael R. Burch.
Whoso List to Hunt
Ancient Greek Epigrams and Epitaphs
Meleager
Sappho
Basho
Oriental Masters/Haiku
Miklós Radnóti
Rainer Maria Rilke
Marina Tsvetaeva
Renée Vivien
Ono no Komachi
Allama Iqbal
Bertolt Brecht
Ber Horvitz
Paul Celan
Primo Levi
Ahmad Faraz
Sandor Marai
Wladyslaw Szlengel
Saul Tchernichovsky
Robert Burns: Original Poems and Translations
The Seventh Romantic: Robert Burns
Timeline of Rhyme
Free Love Poems by Michael R. Burch

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