Cædmon ’s Hymn

 Cædmon’s Hymn

By Cædmon (c. 657-681)

Cædmon was an Anglo-Saxon herdsman attached to the double monastery

of Streonæshalch (657–681). Originally ignorant of the art of song,

Cædmon learned to compose one night in the course of a dream.

Cædmon’s only known surviving work is Cædmon’s Hymn, the nine-line

alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of the Christian god he

supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the

earliest attested examples of Old English and is one of three candidates for

the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the

earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language.

(Summary from wikipedia)

Read by Kara Shallenberg; total running time: 00:01:39.

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Cover picture of a 9th Century Manuscript (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annales_Xantenses.jpg).

Copyright expired in US, Canada, EU and all countries with author’s life +70 yrs laws. Cover design by Janette

Brown. This design is in the public domain.