Caedmon's Hymn
In my "Norton Anthology of English Literature," the first entry is Caedmon's Hymn. It's our first poem, first song; if you take the vast pile of English literature and peel it away, year by year, back through time to the oldest scrap, this is it. Dated sometime between 650 and 680 C.E. Before Shakespeare, before Chaucer, before even "Beowulf" (in the form it has come down) is Caedmon. I love most Anglo-Saxon verse, but I can't stand Caedmon.
"The earliest English poem," of course, is really just the oldest one to have survived. As the Caedmon story makes clear, a rich tradition of poetry flourished around him when he composed his hymn. Random shears cut through history and blindly decide what survives, what doesn't. A Sappho poem sits faded but intact on papyrus stuffed in a barrel bung, while teething moths have devoured the one next to it. Not so in Caedmon's case. His little praise-song survives exactly because it killed off the rest.
In an England still half heathen, where one king set up Ing's idols on the altar in his priest's church, Caedmon was the first to discover that the rich lode of old songmaking could be perverted to the purpose of the new, alien religion. He took a full-flowering pagan art and forced it to the baptismal font and invented the church-hymn. He was the first Christian-rock star. We're the future where Beethoven and the Beatles are forgotten, but Kenny G. still sounds, where Jane Austen is gone but Danielle Steele endures.
The miracle-story of Caedmon is in Bede's history of the English church. To Bede the background is the setting for the gem. Caedmon lives in a settlement around an abbey. The people gather in the evenings after chores in some public hall. There, amid warm fires and laughter, they pull down the harp and pass it around. Everyone takes a turn singing and strumming the chords. They make music as a social function, to win attention, to show affection, to move or amuse one another. Perhaps they tell great adventure-songs from their people's past. Perhaps they sing some raunchy limerick to get a laugh.
But every time this starts to happen, Caedmon gets up and leaves. He slips out of the warm hall into the cold starlit night, on the excuse of tending the sheep. But the truth is, he can't sing, and he's ashamed. When the harp comes near, he ducks out, and he lies in his cold bed and listens to the distant laughter.
One night, after this happens, he dreams an angel stands at the head of the bed and commands him to sing. Caedmon pleads that he can't sing. "Yes, you can," the Angel says. "What shall I sing?" Caedmon asks. The Angel tells him to praise God the creator, and Caedmon burps out this tubthumper hymn about the making of the world.
In Bede's version, he wakes up the next day and tells his aldorman, then the local abbot, and the miracle story begins.
But in my version, Caedmon gets out of bed right then and stalks up to the mead-hall, flings the doors open, stands there and croaks out his sermon song. The whole place turns to watch him. cups half-raised to lips, harp passing from hand to hand of men whose frozen faces now turn toward Caedmon's eruption. And as he sings the whole room begins to fade -- the food, the hands that grip it, the frozen faces, the harp, till the song ends and Caedmon stands alone at the head of a hall as vacant and dim as starlight. And he pulls the doors to and turns to face us.
Now he's all we have.
"The earliest English poem," of course, is really just the oldest one to have survived. As the Caedmon story makes clear, a rich tradition of poetry flourished around him when he composed his hymn. Random shears cut through history and blindly decide what survives, what doesn't. A Sappho poem sits faded but intact on papyrus stuffed in a barrel bung, while teething moths have devoured the one next to it. Not so in Caedmon's case. His little praise-song survives exactly because it killed off the rest.
In an England still half heathen, where one king set up Ing's idols on the altar in his priest's church, Caedmon was the first to discover that the rich lode of old songmaking could be perverted to the purpose of the new, alien religion. He took a full-flowering pagan art and forced it to the baptismal font and invented the church-hymn. He was the first Christian-rock star. We're the future where Beethoven and the Beatles are forgotten, but Kenny G. still sounds, where Jane Austen is gone but Danielle Steele endures.
The miracle-story of Caedmon is in Bede's history of the English church. To Bede the background is the setting for the gem. Caedmon lives in a settlement around an abbey. The people gather in the evenings after chores in some public hall. There, amid warm fires and laughter, they pull down the harp and pass it around. Everyone takes a turn singing and strumming the chords. They make music as a social function, to win attention, to show affection, to move or amuse one another. Perhaps they tell great adventure-songs from their people's past. Perhaps they sing some raunchy limerick to get a laugh.
But every time this starts to happen, Caedmon gets up and leaves. He slips out of the warm hall into the cold starlit night, on the excuse of tending the sheep. But the truth is, he can't sing, and he's ashamed. When the harp comes near, he ducks out, and he lies in his cold bed and listens to the distant laughter.
One night, after this happens, he dreams an angel stands at the head of the bed and commands him to sing. Caedmon pleads that he can't sing. "Yes, you can," the Angel says. "What shall I sing?" Caedmon asks. The Angel tells him to praise God the creator, and Caedmon burps out this tubthumper hymn about the making of the world.
In Bede's version, he wakes up the next day and tells his aldorman, then the local abbot, and the miracle story begins.
But in my version, Caedmon gets out of bed right then and stalks up to the mead-hall, flings the doors open, stands there and croaks out his sermon song. The whole place turns to watch him. cups half-raised to lips, harp passing from hand to hand of men whose frozen faces now turn toward Caedmon's eruption. And as he sings the whole room begins to fade -- the food, the hands that grip it, the frozen faces, the harp, till the song ends and Caedmon stands alone at the head of a hall as vacant and dim as starlight. And he pulls the doors to and turns to face us.
Now he's all we have.
