2. magoum, bede's story of caedman the case history of an anglo-saxon

7/30/2019 2. Magoum, Bede's Story of Caedman the Case History of an Anglo-Saxon

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BEI}E,S STORY OF C,ED}LdN: THE CASE HISTORYOF AN ANGLO-S;LXON ORAL StrNcERlBy FRAI{CIS P. I|IAGOUN, JnIx Book ltr', ch. 23, (24) of his Histciia Ecclesiastica Ge,ntis Anglorunt, completedin e.n. ?31, Bede" monk of Saint Paui's monastery, *lrrow, County Durham,tells the story of an ualettered farmhand, Cadman by name, who in an unex-pected fashion, reportedly supernatural, developped the art of orally composingnarrative verse on Biblical-Christian subjects. Cmdrnan, composing his songssome fifty years before Bede was s'riting, was an emplo;ree on the monastic estateat Strinss-h*Ie, today Whitby, about flfty miles scuth of Jarrow on the Yorkshirecoast.? This chapter in Bede is of peeuliar interest to students of oral poetry,a as*'ell as to those of Anglo-Saxon literature, in tha.t it furnishes an aceount, a case-histor;. indeed, of certain parts of the career of an oral singer of the past. ft is theonly such aeeount knor*'n to rne that goes track substantially earlier than thememory of lir,'ing men. The chapter in question follows on, and is closely cop-nected *'ith, an eneorniastic appraisal (ch. 21 [g$j] of the rule of Hild (653-S80),buiider and ahbess of the \Yhitby found*.tion.Only the flrst two-thirds of the chapter, devoted to Caedman &s a singer oftales, is translated here; the rest has to dc with his death and is irrelevant to thematter in hanrl

THE STORY OF C,iSDMAN OF \YT{ITBYChaptcr 92, {9,4){relales} lhd in hcr rnons,ste?g ${r$ a brothar ta whnr*, tke gift af singingwes d,iriwly gi*e* ddi*,initus eancesnsm).In the monastery of th*t abbess rr&s & eertain bmther especially marked try d.ivinegrace. {d,&;ina grali* speoialiter i.nsignisr} in t}rat, he was in the habit of eomposing songspcrtaining to rcligion and pietJi, sc that whatever he learned thmugh interprei-ers of Sac"Jd\Yritings he rendered the same in a short time in his onryr languege, namely, that of theEnglish {Angloru.rn)" in poetical words (traditionatr formulas? sa'$is paaicis}, ccmposedwith the greatest sweetness and most inspiring quality. By his rorrgr ih* spirits of ilanywere ofter fired to scora of this sorld and to an eager desire for the heavenly life. And afterl The present peper represente an elaboration of * pnrtion of the tlird {"Some Problems of the

Future") of three Speeial lJniversity Lectures {series-iitle: "Oral-Formulaic Tradition in Angiti-Saxon Poetry") delivered in the Senate House eif London LTniversity 94 January 1gd2. The Chart(p. 62' below) is a revision of a mimeographd eounterpart distributed at the third leeture. On theother leetures af this serie! ree Srxcul,uu, xxrinr (lSES), r$46, n. 1"' For a general di.ccmslsn of Caduo*n and the llywn see Albert Ilugh Smith, Three NrrthumbrianPocm-r, ete. (London: *f,ethuen, 1$33), pp. 10-15, and for later bibliography George K. Anderson,The Litnrature af thc.4agI+'Sacoas {Princeton, l{ew Jercey: Princeton University Fress, 1g4$), p. 14d.3 For significant work in recent Jrears oa the essentlal a*ture ead techniques of the orally composedpoetry of unlettered singers see Srpcr.Ltd, xxvn (1S5S),446, notes 2-3; referenees to Parry given be-low are as defined there. For furth.er materia! orl the heroic soags of Yugoslavia see no&' Albert BatesLord, Sarlo-Cro*tian Heaic Songe (Carrbndge, It{ass.: Harvard L'lniversity Press, l95B) , passim.,for original texts and Ilnglish translations" See also n. ?o below.{s


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5iI #n{r'"s Sf*r.ty of C*dmonhim this and that person aurorig the peopie of the Englisir trieti tc compose religious poernsbi:t no onc was atrrle to rqual him {n'ulfus mrm aequip*,rare potuilll. For ire }rad learred theart of singing neither frorn rnen nor from man (ep. Gal,ati*ns, i" 1) but receil'ed the gifto$ singing tlivinely aided (dioenih.ts ad,iutu*). For this reason he was nercr able to composeany sort of trivial or purposeless pocrn, but cnly those whiclr. eancerned piety suited hisdevout tongua.lndeeci, he was established in a. sccular r*ay of life to the tirne of a rather advanced age{,prar;ectiltris aelcfas) rvithcut, ever having learned any songs {nil, eannd,num, ali.quandod,idicarat)" Consequently, sometimes at table wiren for the sake of merrymaking it wasr.oted that one anii ali should take tursrs slnging, he, ncticing the harp {cithnra.} corningnear him, r*'oulcl get up in the middie of a meal and, Ieaving, go back home.On a certain ocrasion he did this and, quitting the iranquet-hall, went out to the stableof the animal,s whose tending had t cen a^ssigned him that night and here at the proper timesurendered his limbs to sleep. Then there stood hy him in a. dream a certain person, who,greeting him and also addressing him by name, said: "C*dman, sing me something." Inreply, however, Cedman said: "I do not kror+" hor+. to sing; in fact I left the tranquet-halland rctired for thc very reason tirat I could not sing." Again the person who u.as talking tohim said: "\ieverthelessr )rou have in mind (something) tc sing for nae {mihi cantarehabes)"" "\Lh&t," said Cedma;r, "should I sing?" lYhereupon the person said: "Sing ofthe beginnirrg of created things." On receir.ing this ansxr, Cmdmau immediately beganto sing in praise cf Gad the Creator versrs which he hed ne\rer heard, of whichthesenseis this:'oli


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Berle's Story of CedmanHoly Spirit, and tht-' i.eaching of the Apostles. Li,kerise, he composed maly songs aboutthe Last Judgment and the horror of Lfernal punishmeut, also^ many po""ms aUout ttr"su'eetness of the heavenly kingdom, also very **o3- others abcut divinc b*oefits and juclg-ments. . " .a

Bede's narratil'e raises a number of issues which will tre dealt with in the fol-lo:r'ing order: (1) ?he Traditional (Oral-formulaic) Character of the Oid-EnglishText of the Hgm,n' (g) ?he Date of Cmdman's Dream, His Age at that Time,and his Literary Background; (3) ;lnglo-Saxon Christian Poetry before Cmd-m&n; (a) The I'{iracle: a Rational fnterpretation; (5) Cmdmau's Ultimate Reper-tor;,-; (6) lYhat Songs of Cedman have su*.,ived?; (?) Conclusion.1. THE TRADrTroi\*AL (0RAI-F0RMULAIC) C,HARACTER oF THE 0LD-ENGLISHTEXT OF THE HYMTTIn the J)ftssage above, Bede, with some apologies, gives in Latin transiation ahymn or doxology t&ich Ccedman is said to have composed in his sleep at theprompting of a stnanger, presumahly felt by the dreamer to be a heavenly visitor,an angel. Apart from Bede's T,atin version we have also an Old-English lext pre-sert'ed in the relatively enormous number of seventeen copies, of which lour giv"an Old-Northurnbrian versicn, thirteen \lest-Saxon (five in the \\rest-SaxonBede, eight in rnanuscripts of the Latin Bede);6 among these eopies are a coupleof trifiing variants (apart from rnere spetrling differences) which will be consideredhriefly belon'" fn nine t;pographical lines, or better, nine pairs of verses -_ sinceAnglo-Saxon poetry is composed essentia,lly in verse units -. Cmdman eomposedin his sleep his little doxr:log;'. Ernbetlished rnith the use of the conventionalrhetorieal device of parallelism or variation it says in efiect: "Let us praise God{ Translated from Charies Plummer, Tren*.rabili"s Baedac lligbr*z Eeetesinetina Gentis Angk*um,etc., r (Oxferd, lggs), p5$-?61"The harp that circulated at Crdman's clinner-t*ble, pertraps, too, in the Biowulf scenes mentionedin a. 19, below, *as quite likeiy of the relativeiy small and hantly size of the Sutton l{oo harp recoR-structed in the workshops of Arnold Dolmetsch, ttd., at l{aslemere, Surrey, in eonsuitation witlearehaeological experts. According to Mrs Dotrmet*ch "The {sutton }Ioo) instrument was probably notof the iargest t-ripe" but one that x'ould be handed around the banqueting table" (reported in ,.TheSutton Hoo Bfusical Instrumenl," The ArthuzolaEbal Noros Lefuer, r, No. t [London, April 1g4g],1l-13, x'ith figure). Photos of the recoastrueted harp on exhibit in the British -Mus"um *ay be ,u"r,in Rnpert L- S' Bruce-11{itford, "The Sutton Hao Ship-burial," Proeeed.inga of lh.e Royal lnst.ituteof Great Britaitt, xxxrv, Ft iii, No. rss {1950}" Pl. II B" facing p.44?, and in SeaenJiqe A*ericon,

1=ol' 18d, No. 4 (April 1g5t), c't-30 pa*aim; there is aiso a plaie in Roslyn Rensch, ihc Harp, ete,iNew York: Philosophical Library, l9E0), p. 14, pl. fV, ffg. I.The identificotion snd reconstmetion of the Sutton Hoo harp highligh* the diseussion of the roleof the harp in the delivery of Anglo-Saxon poetry by John C. Pope, inr Angn* aJ B6ooul! {Ne1gI{aveu, Connecticut: YalefiniversityPress, 1949), pp.88- i; or,th" harp in connection with OldFrisian poetry see SptrcuLUM, xxm i1S4g), S0g-For a brief diseussion of the harp in the general setting of the ship"buriai see most recentl_v Bruee-}{itford in Robe.rt Howard Hadgkin, A frisb,ry of the Angla-Sacons, n {Brd ed., Orford, l95g), ?00.5 On thc nanuseript-s, text, and variants ol lhe Hymn see Smith, o7t- cit., pp" 1-4 ()iorthumbrianlIss'),38-41 (Northumbrian and I4'est-Saxon rersions facing, with Northumbrian variants); alsoElliot \i' K- Dobbie, Tka il{anus*i,pts oJ Cadm.cn's Eymtt ond.-Bede's Death Song iNew York: Colum-bia University Press, l9S?), pp. l$-4g, embraeing all terts.

51


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Bed,e's Sfory af Ced,manand l{is rvorks" God frrst created heaven as a rool for men, then the Earth forthem." The inspiration of the piece uray n'ell be iiturgicalsBefore exarnining lhe Hyrnn with a view to determining fhe nature of its ian-gu&ge! it wiil be well to stress thc fact that orally composed poetry b)'unletteredsingers -.- or occasionallf' by lettered singers composing accordiug to the tech-nique of their unlettered fellows - as oppcsed to the work of lettered poets withready access to writing materials, is pr.rt together not word by word with delibera-tion and at leisure but rapidly in the presenee of a liveaudience by means of ready-made phrases filling just rneasures of isochroaous verse capable of expressingerier]i idea that the singer may wish to express in l'arious metrical situations.These phrases may be called formulas and their use distinguishes the verse of theorally composed poems of unietterecl" singers whether Anglo-Saxon, Faroese,rFinnish,s llomeric.e or Serbo-Croatian,ro to mention no others. It is quite possible,

6 Smith, o'p. cit., p. 38, n. 1, esp. the liturgieal incipit: W& etulan Got! hefi,an, with which cp. Eymn1a.

? The highly formulaic character of the Faroese ballads is emphasired by llelmut De Bo,:r, Ddafiiraischen Lieder t{zs i{ibe}ungar*ylclu* (Ileidelberg. 1918), p. 8: "But particul;arly in the Faroeseballads the poeticai formula plays a:r absolutely domiuar:t role, incompara.bly more than in the Danishand Swedish trall*ds and, indeed, than in aay (other) Germanic [!] poetical gente"; p. .9: "The Faroeseballads have not sLoppecl with the formulaic }ine; they aLro have in large numbers forsaulaie stanzasand series of stanzas, i.e., traditional situatione *nd $cene!." These long formulas to which De Boorrefers are in efrect "'themes," which, like formulas. may often form an impartant part of a singer'sctock-in-trade. From AS poetry reederu will recall the theme ol beasts eonventionally associated withthe field of battle so popular with the singers and diseixsed hy myself in "The ?heme of theBeastrof Rattle in Anglo-Saxon Poetry," Ne*phibtagi^tche trfdtteilungen, r,vr {1955), forthcoming, with litera-ture. On the lrasir of thematerials *n*l1"sed byJohn Aberercmtry in f,Ize Pra- aad, Protahi*tori.e Fi.nrz*. . . with the l{*.gic 'Son4rs cJ t}ze West Fi,*xs, n (London, 1898}, 40 fi., it is clear that the trrinnishnretrical cherms (l*itszmunt) were commonly built up out of an a-ssortment of themac familiar to thesingers o'thcugh x-orked out in a great varlety of phraseoiory" {Ioe" ezf. p" 41, l. 3}.t O:r Finnish traditional or ruro-poetry, most familiar through Elias Lbnnrot's collecting and ce-menting together of fifty shortish narrative pcems under the title I{aJeraJo trut abundantly representedin lyrics (cp. Liinnrot's Katdele, Ka*talatar) and metric*l charms ilrlislurunotj, proverbs (sananlasku,tj,arrd metrical riddles (arooitakset\, see Domenieo Coneparetti, lhe Trsd,itin*al Paeirg o! the Fir*tt,translated frou the lt*lian by Isatrella M. Anderton {London, 1898}, esp. pp. ?-4, 10-15, 1& 6Q-S9,on various fea,tures characteristic of the oral b*ckground. For a very different kind of a study trut withrauch relevant matter see Kaarle Krohn, Kcleoala.tfadian puhtrished between 192it and 198 (Helsinki)io Folktore Fellows Com*,u*i*ali*ns, Nris. SS {1$e4), S? {f9?6). ?l.-fg tlg?7),75-76 (19e8). The formu-laic charaeter (with traditional epithetr, reeurrent phrases and verses, parallelisna or variation) of theverse of the Kalevala emergee quite ciearly in the verse-translation of lYilliam Forsell Kiby, Kalesuls.:tke Lend af F(eroes, two r,olumes in "nEvsrlman's Library," (1S0?). It should be noted that the prosetranslaticn ol Kaleoala $faneoci


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Bed,e's Story of Ccdmatt 53to be sure, to ecmp


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clt Bede"s Sfory af Cedrnanon occasion repeat lrerses of his ollm or borrow- a yerse from another poet for somerhetoricai purpose - a forrnula, as definetl above, is most obvious and most easilyidenti{ied on its second or third occurrenee. Thus verses 14, 2a, 2b, 3a, 4a, 4b"5a,.5b, ?a, 8a, 9a" when compared with the supporting evidence, stand out clearlyas formulas; ttrese occur exactl-v the same elsewhere or, as in the case of verses 4aand 4b, rvith some trifling change in inflection to fit a slightly different syntacticaisituation, a minor adjustrnent over which a singer composing oraily would n*tneed to ponder or hesitate"3a. fr"uld.or-fader may be called a forrnula, not merely because this compoundhappens to oecur elsexhere but bec.suse it fiils a just measule of verse, here the.second mea,sure of a D-verse. Else*'here it will be noted that with some precedingunstressed word or worrls it lets the singer n:ake the second rlleasure of a B-verse.Much tlre same can be said of tirest s$p (5a), with the substitution for dresl ofon frympe-4b. 6r owteolde, along with 5b, is one of the two verses where a substantialvariant (orfl is recorde


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Berle's Slory of Ccdma,nq. THIi DATE OF C,ODMAft'S DREAM, IIIS AGE AT THAT TI}IE, ANI} HISLITERARY BACKGROL:ND

The l:eginning of Ciedman's public singing must have been bet*,een 658 and680, the ycars of llild's rtrle as abbess of trYhitb-v, and no more precise daie islikel.l' to be arrived at on the trasis of our present sources" For practical purposes,honever, it is r:onrrenient to split the differenee and to imagine * "o*p*o*ise rlateIike 6?0, forty-fir'e !-ears after ttre coming of Paulinus to }brk and thirtSr-fiveafter Aiclan of Iona settled on HolS' Isle (tindisfarne) ofi the NorthumLrcrlan6coast. Christianit;' had reached the south nearly seventl'-five years before thistime' a.P- 6?0 is aiso close to the time when Aldhelm was singin! at }lalmesbur-vin the southrvest.ldThere is atrso the question af Credrnan's age rvhen he began to sing * at, what-ever ilat'e. Popuiar thought fr"orn the late ninth century on has tenteci to thinkof hirn as olcl at that time, really old, and so he ma-v have been. Becle describeshini as Ttrot:ectioris aeta{,i* "of rather adr-aneecl &ge," a somewhat re]ative indica-tion. The hundred-.year-old Abraham and his ninety-year-old wife Sarah {Gen.xriii, 11) are said to be ambo senes prooeetae aedatis. Chaucer expresses about thesame idea by the phrase somdeel stupe in age to clescrib" * poo, .,ri,ido*, who isotherx,ise otx,iously a healthy and r-ery vigorous woman! perhaps no1 a 4ay overthirty-five. The lYest-Saxon rendering of Bede's ynwectiori,s aetatis is letifdreielde "*f {eeble or infirm old age" and seems to go a touch be5,6rr,1 Bede; to thinkor to elaim that this West-Saxon tradition rests on sorne sort cf continuing rvordto arouth tradition would be a shak;' business. To judge from the careers of theoral singers of Yugoslavia, rirany of *'hieh have treen colleeter{ ancl studied byPar;'and by Lord, it is unusual for a singer to rievelop in himself the art of sinj-ing after gror+'ing up; for the most part the.y .- and very iikely all oral singers ofall tinre-* and piaces - Iearn to sing in their teens, though becoming more adept,more polished rvith experience. One Yugoslav singer, hcwever, reportecl that hefirst Lregan to sing at the age o{ tN,ent},-eight.

16 *(ee Srpc.*Llrll, xx1:rlr (i953)" 454*455, n. 15, far the text *nd translation of williarn of }fallrces-burl''s important staternent' Irased on Alfred the Great, about Aldhelm as a singer. trTith other ac-companf ing dis*ussion see Cyril Ernest llright, The CuttinatrxraoJ Scgo in Xnak>Sa*on Engla1nd(Edinburgh: Oliver and Bo-1'd, M39), pp. 2r-9e (with translation), p. 9i0, $e (Wiliiam's Latin texti;also Eleanor S' $uckett, slng[o-Saxorz Saeads ond Selrolar.s {New York: Macmillan, Igi?), pp" 4t-{JIn cctuntries rvhere orsl singing is pr*ctieed the trest silging at any gir"en time seems to be colr-centrated in a certa.in region. fn present-day Yugostravia the hest is in the Rfuslim communities ofBosnia, Iferzegovina, and l{onteuegr.r; sonae trundred and twenty,five years ago and 1ater, Finrishcollectors found the really good and rich ruo-siriging in eastern (Russian) Karelia, whieh is not to saythat this had its origin there either as to form or substaace (see Kaarle Krohn op" eit., note g ahove,fFC' No' 53, pp.30 ff.)' (Jne has the impression, perhaps founded on insufficient data or a fauityinterpretation of the surririing data, that the best Anglo-Saxon singing was in the north, but, the.lldhelm pas\Bge tqstifies to good si:iging in the south, at least in the seventh century; for claims (pot,I think, demonstrahle or substantiated) ol a southern origin of certain surviving Anglo*Saxon songs,see Ceeiiia A- If+tchner, Wesset a*C Otd-English Poetry, wirh Special Canside.raion oy tA, fir;r, 4N"r9York, 1939).


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5S Bede's Sfary of Cedmun"Saban B.ahmanovid in Biha6 told u-" [Parry and LordJ that he did not learnto sing unti] he was about tn'enty-eight (he w,as forty-five in 1935) and that heiIearnerl his song.s frorn song-books, tbe. fuf atiea.hruatska in particular. Although hecould not read, somelxrdy had read them to him" But he had also heard theoldersingers in his district. . " . fn the case of Sahan it is very possible that he hadheard man.y singers when he q,as .Y-oung _- he admits having hearrtr his unclesing -- but tliat he did not attempt to learn the art until later."r?Since the learning period of an oral singer is extended a.nd posits a protractedperiod of listening to older singers and o{ absorbing formulas and themes, Lhere isno reason to suppose that Anglo*Snxon singers ordinariiy developed their art in

an-v substantiai n'ay clifferent from the Yugoslavs. Since, however, a,s rrill eppea,rpp. 58-59, bloll', Caedman rnust have learnettr to sing well trefore his publicappearance }:e{ore the angei and the TVhitby eommunity, it makes little dif-ference at what age !!'e irnagine his d6but. To his monastic audience it er.identlyseemed late - old _* and one might, as well imagine him as fortyish or fiftyislias anlthing else. Iri any el'ent, once he got going, he may actually well have goneon singing to a ripe olrl age indeerl"l8Cdman's literary background consisterl of every song and story he ever lis-tened to. traditional and secular or, relatively novel in the Anglo-Saxon world,religious, rvhether from singers of tales or from priests or nuns telling him Biblestories. All this conslituted a literary background as mueh as though it had cometo hirn through his eye rather than his ear. At the tirne Bede's story begins, it iselear that tLere rlras a traclition of singing traditianal songs on the Ilhitby este,te.The basis of the c&reers of the overn'helming majorit;, of oral singers consists inlistening ta other singers, ordinariiy their elders, and this is implied in Cmdman'scase by the rvords "'in convivio, cum esset laetatis causa decretum, ut omnesper crdinern cantare r.ieberent"; in Crdman's set singing was patently a com-monly practiced art. .lmong the r{nglo-Saxons in general the singing of songs,usualiy probatrly to the acccmpaniment of a harp, E.as a far.ored forrn of elter-tainment on festive occasions as n"itnessed in Bdotruil b-v the setting of the Crea-tion h.vmn (89b-gS), of the r.arious songs irnpiied in 856b ff., of the Lay of Finn(1063*1159ai, singing in the ss,me setting pickeri up again in pl0?-l3a (w-here wefirst learn that l{r6pga.r uas a singer in his own right}, and in Widsi,p 66-{?t)and 103 fi.1? Cmdman had no doubt hearrl mlrch singing in the course of his life onand cff the monaslic ests,te.One uiay appropriatetry ask n'hat sort of singing Cedrnan would have heartl

1? Lord, thesis, p. 4S"18 Tlrere n'ere agtl singers among the subjects of Lord and Pa,rry and similarly, including women aswell as men, amollg F'innish runc-singers, ae reported in Comparetti, ap. cit. (note 8 above), p. lB andn. l, p. 21 and n. I; I{rohn, op. eit" (note I above}, FFC, No. 53, p- p0.lq On the htrrp see n. 4, above. On antiphonai singing, possibly referred t"a in Wlds6p l0s-l$4("1f it Scielling... sang ah6fon"),_see Stefdn Einarsson, '-Ytixels*,ng i Wtd"$${?), Sturlu*ga ochFinla,nd," Rud*arlen, xxx {TurkuT'Abo, 1P51), 1*-32,;on Finni:}r practicesee Comparetti, pp.69-?1,Krohn, loe. cii." pp. ?9-3$. There is a most effective painting, done in I845 by the Pollqh artist G. Bud-kox'ski and preserved in the FinnisL }iational Museum ($uomen Kensallisrnriseo) in Helsinki of thernno-singers OIli K-r,uaiainen and Pietari Makkonen, singing thris with ihe kantele.


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Bed,e's Sfary of Cedm*n 5?at such gatherings as he rvould have raostl;- attended at the monastery or havehearrl hefore the tirne of his empio.l.ment there. lmong the peasantry of his ehiltt-hood and ar)ong the help on the \Ttritb-v estate he must by ancl large have hearclsongs dealing with traditionai Germanic story or lyrical productions in connec-tion with, say, weddings and funerals, perhaps on oecasion magical incantations.lYe canuot knorv for srrre, hut Bede does remark that traditional-secular themesrvere distasteful to hinr ('*nil umquam frivoli et supervaeui poematis faeerepotuit.") lYhatever he did hear would have been composed in the traditionalmanner out of the standard reservoir of formulas and themes and in conformitS'with the traditional rnetrical patterns according to which alone the singers coulclhave sung. The story material, plots, would have been traditional, too; thedeeds of great figures of the past or conceivably, if more rarell.. and more passingly,rnore contemporary events comparable to the much later .4{oldon, thougir nonesuch harre come down to us in verse, In an.v event there is no reason to assumeany .sort of specialtrSr peasant-t$e poetry, still less for irnagining that a man ofCadman's social standing rvould not have heartily enjoyed songs a,bout the greatand qralthy of long ago. To this present day socially simpie people quite cour-monl-v take an extraordinary interest in matters reported in the soeiety eolumnsa{ nerrspapers. ?he folk-tales {Kzndrx- u,nd, Hau"sntd.rchm},collected by the Grimmbrothers from flessian peas*nt women a centuryand a half ago, atound in roy-altyand in sr:mptuous settings, though often with curious and arnusing blends ofcourtly elegance and rustic simplieity. ft is in fact unnatural to imagine thatC*dman's listening exlrerience before his becoming a practieing singer as limitedor peculiar in any way. There is to be sure faulty and halting Anglo-S&xon verse(e.g., parts of the Fi,nn Fragm,erif, the disjointed narrative of the Wife's Lament,parts of some of the I'Ietrical Charra.s) but its tradition is or aspires to be iden-tical *'ith the very best; it.s medioerity presumahly rnerely reflects poor perform-aBces try inrlifferent singers rvho in sorn cases }iave not quite remembered thesong- The Oid-Gerrn&n L*y a! Hitd,ebrand, eomposed in the same tradition and inthe same lralr es the Anglo-S*xon sorlgs] is similarly a technieally miserat:Ie per-forrnanee.

9. ANGI,G-SAXON POETRY BEFORE C,IEDMANThe language anri the sr:bject matter of tire l{ymn, as of the late poem Ctzri.stand Satan previously riiscussed,z0 raises the rluestion of the existence of Chrirtirn

poetr;,- before Credman's day. The highly traditianai, formulaic language af theHgmn inetrudes a number of formulas 'll.'irich eannot be easily i**gt"Jto havetreen created or used in pre-Christian England, atrl with re{erenceslo the Deit3.':heafan-rites weord, (la), h{et*des meahte {2a}, Wuldar-fed,er {3a), dee Dryhten(4a, 8a). Fria eall-mrilift3 (sb). and /rdlf 3 Scieppend (6b), the last only by chancenot represented elsewhere in the poetry. There are eight references 1o the Deityin eighteen verses, making up fort.1,-four plus per cent c,f the poem. It might beargued that Cmrhnan invented these anil the other formulas in his sleep, but20 See Srrcur,r.fu, xxrlrr (1953), ,154-458.


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58 Bede's ,Sfory af Cadmanawake or asleep, if true, this w'oukl I:e miraculous indeed, sinee under ob'servableconditions formulas are created only slor*'l.r- and no one singer ever invents rnany,often none at all, frnding the ava.ilable supply quite adequate for his needs" Rutrnuch points to an early der"eloprnent of a supplementary diction making possibleformulaie reference ta the Deity and other characteristically Christian mattersand consequently it is tc be supposed that Credman had heard and learned enougho{ tlrese to be sufficient to his purpose in the Hgrnn and su}rsequent songs.

4. TIIE ITIIRACI,E: A RATIONAL INTERPRETATIONThe nurnher of tirnes that Bede speaks of Cadman as having been divinelyaided both in the eornpasition of the Elyrnn, and by inference, his referenees t


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Bed,e's Sro.y af Ced.man 5gtlre composition of the Hym.n and for his sutrsequent singing on Biblical and re-iated themes he rnust have eommanded all necessary formulas, unless one as-sumes a truie miracle or disbeiieves Bede's statement. This comm.and of fornrulasand general techniqtre *ft* the dream can only mean a command of the sarnebefore the cirea,rn, in a u,ord, that Credman had been learning them over a longtime, since childhcod or, if a late starter, since eariy manhood. tlis reai and soledifficulty wouid seem then to have been oniy an. unconqrierable fear and conse-quent ina,biiit.y to sing before an audience, to have suffered in effect a kinci ofstage-fright; he may have been like a starnmerer who can speak quite clearlyrvhen alone. On the night of the dreamn as no doubt on other occasions, he ob-viously wanted desperately to lie able to sing in public an


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60 lletl.e's Sfory af Ced'manbefore a,n auciience is apt to characterize either an inerperienced singer or a per-fectionist. Bede reports an exten-qive uitimate repertory, though nothing bel,ondthe range of good oral singers;z4 this included songs based cn tales in the baok ofGene.ris, E*adus, and others, on the life of Oir Lord {materiai perhaps on the orderof Ckrist l and 1I), the teaching of the ^A.postles (material perhaps emLrracing suchapoorSphai tales as the Life of Sct.nfs tr{attkeut and, And.re?r} represented in theAruirea*j, the Last Judgment (cp" C&rust Iil and Cirt,qi and Safan, as well as*ceparate teilings of this matter), and lots of other things ("et alia perpiura"). Forall this he had to have texts read aloud and/or erpounded to him in English inorder to rnaster the narrative. ilhis is not how most orai singers learn their songs,since rnost, songs in sueh a school are trased on olctr tradition which the singershave mastered during their period of absorption and iearning. But in Yugo-slavia rvhere, as in Anglo-Saxon Bngiand, lettered a.nd unlettered persons liveside by side, singers not infrequentl-v do iearn their songs from printed sources -*in turn from older oral sourees '- reatl atroud to unlettered singers try ietteredfriends. Saban Bahmanovie, mentioned on pp. 55-56 above, is a case in point.As for the length and forrn of Cmdman's songs, one can only say that thesernust have varied considerably from performance to performance and would de-pend *lmost entirely *n the audience factcr, i.e., how long a given a,udience mightbe able or wiiling to sta,y with him. The siuger of Etadus, for example, devotestrventy-nine t3'pographical lines (ll. 3S?-4gSi to the story of Abraham's ofreringof fsaac, the singer of Gmosis acLrut three times as rnuch space to the same story(ll.?84S-*9$S). Similarly* the singer of the Exeter Book poern' the Grfis af lfan,devotes IlS lines and of The Fortunes of tr{en some eig}rty lines to God's variedand unequal gifts to human beings, rvhile Cl,nex'ulf (Christ ff, u. 6iffi91) de-l'otes oniy thirty'three lines to the same topic, though ail three poems are treat-ing of the same rnatter in much the same N,a;r, including the rhetorical use ofinit.ial anaphora {sum, sumum.}.2* 'fhis audience ean tre a live audience in a tavern,in the hali of an Anglo-Saxcn nohlernan, perhaps in his outbuildings, Gr it canbe a tape-recorder or a monastic scribe; the latter r*'as cbviously the audience ofttrre perform&nces of such Anglo-Saxon sorgs as h*ve come down to us. A let-tered singer, say, Cp'newulf, working in the oral tradition2s - probably the onlyway a.n Angio-Saxcn could canceive of composing native verse -- rnight of colrseEirikr bl6$itx of York or for Xing .4thelst6n of England. For the surrounding narrative of this curiousaccount of poetic composition q.nd the poem itself see Sigur6ur Nordal, Egile saga Skalls-Grfimstonar(cf" 5$-60), I{iil isleuzka Fornritafiag, rr (Ileykjavik, lggg), pp. ISI-109 ipp. 1BI a.d f,n": pd ganqaPzir t taft niikkurt t{tit} or Gudni J6ns*on, isle*tfuga siigu?, tl(Reykjar-ik, 1946), 1g6-19?, and con-venientiy aceessible, though with an inferior text of the poem, in the l*te E. V. Gordon , An Introiluc-tixtnb AM Jforsa (Oxford, 199?i reprinted i* 1988), pp" 93*98. For an Bnglish version with an Englishverse rendering of the poem see Lee M" Hollander. Tlze Shalds (Prineeton lJniversity Press, ls45),pp. 6x-?S.

2a ()ood, mature oral singers majl prlssess repertoires running into seoreg of songs, i.e.o stories; cp.Coruparetti, pp" 90, 356-33?; Krohn, pp. 16 ad3tr.s Or"i this wide-sprea.tl iolk-rnotif see Bolte-Polivka sn Grimm No. 180 ("Die ungleichen KinderEvas"J.26 See rrow Robert ltr. Diamond, The Dicrion of tke SignedPaems at Cynewi! {unpublishedllarvard

thesis, 1S$S), 3rc.ssam.


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Bed.e's .Sfor'y af Cedtnandictate tc himself, t,haugh this n'oukl presumabil- be aE uncommcn if not arc,k-llard procedure,

WIIAT SOI{GS OF C.IEDMAN IIA\G SL'iR\ITVEI}?Frorn a sentirnental point of vien'it. rrould be pleasant to think that apart fromthe iittle Hyrzn, short a,nd easily memorized, we had other songs or substantialremnants of songs i:y Cadrnan. I-inless, how-ever, the \liest-Saxcn translator ofBede is coryect in his apparentl;. entirely personai staternent that the monks oflYhitiiy took clcn'n Cmdman's compositions from dictation {er his nui:6e u;ritan},lr presumatrly trave nothing of the sort. Our sole hope of identifying such would,in any event, iie in the survival of a text eontaining at the beginning or end sucha statement as the "Prirno cantavit C*dmon istud carmen," made at the end ofthe Hymn in the hfoore manuscript of Bede. IJnless his compositions, i.e., givenperformances of his, rnere dictateri during his life-time and copies of these dic-

tated copies had survir"ed, there woulcl b* no possikrility whater,rr of his "E'orksn'surviving in our sense of the word; for onal poetry knows nothing of fixit5. of text,since no song of any }ength can be memorized try a singer and each perlormanceof a gir.en song rrill in wording !-a,ry a,ppreciably, often markedly, frorn one per-fcrrnanee to the next. lrerbal similarities in different performances of the "same"song, Iike vertral recrme*ces in differ*nt songs lry different singers working inthe sanre general tradition, will be due only to the fact that a singer wants toexpress the same general idea and as a matter of course uses the same cow-enientformula or forrnula.s to achier"e this end" Thus, local singers who admired CEd-man's yerses rvould in a sense have "learned I:y heart" his snngs, that is, thesubjects an


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6g fied,e's "tfory of Cedma*,?. CCII{CLU.SION

Bede's story teiis one nothing about ihe l:irth af Anglo-Saxon poetr-v of anykind, not er.rcn of Christian r:aratir,'e \retrse, and it makes no claim to furnish suchinformation. Bede does not even communicate the Anglo-Saxon text of the[Iym,n, furnished us by later scribes after his death; nonetheless it is of great in-terest to have in a Bedan context the text of this unpretentious, very short poemof no great originality o{ eonception though nicely organized along the }ines of aconventional little doxologS.1\hat Bede does give us, however, is (as remarked at the beginning of thispaper) of extraordinarSr irnportauce, from the past, indeed, a unique picture o{part of the career, a case-history, of an oral singer iiving in a lettered community.Fcr the stucieni cf the vast field of the oral poetry of unlettered peoples Bede'schapter is a precious document, an invaluable record froru the past, Anglo-Saxor:or other.

Hanv*nn UxrlxnsrtvCHART

I,Iir x-6 scrlon herian heofon-rldes ll'eard,nf"t"a"" *"uf,t" -a"a tti" *Aa*"par.q*-""" \,\'"ldo.+ma*r, ."'e Ua *r.*ar" Sehw*s,*,ee n.yht""., g (oar. ard)onsG1l4f._--=5 H6 6rest {5e)sc6p ielda (var. eorban) bearnumheofcn to lr6fe h6,li5 Scieppend;p6 laiddan-:eard mann-cl'nnes lTeard,r*ee Dryhteri efter t6ode -firum foldan Frea eall-mihti5.la Gen 8f6 N* m6 me5 hr6awan; A{od, 751f }iA Fii meaht 5ecn6wan; Eln 511 N* }fmeaht, 5eiiieran; Baf 395 Nri 3 m6ton gangan. lb Gen 1363, 1484" 1744, 2fi73i Eco 486Donl*,26; X,SriXg0 rr-ir ie bed h6.lsie /heofon-rf6es lYeard; Aild.59, herede on heortan,ireofon-rifesWeard;.Eie 1g?,445, 7tr8; DrE 91;Gdc 61J., 789; &{*t 11, 31; PPs 90, 1; Ps 50, 113KIII C; Jd.g II ?$. 2a XSt SSg,;And 694; Dara 169 pet h6 walde Metodes / meahte 5eliefar.5ST Metcdes :neahta, ti58" Gan 189 Metodes meahtum " Cp. Dan 20 Metodes m*gensciepe; PIlr 6 purh }letodes meaht; Mst 29.48 l\fetodes cr,mfte" 2b trfet 31, 19; cp. Gen(B253swrimihiti5ne / an hism6d-sep6hL;Bwf 1??Smannesmdd-gelanc;Ged63,159,4,9,94126{7 m6d-ge}ances (instr.); M*s I123fu*r bi} maxnes / nbd-5ep*ncas.3a Cp. Clrr 21'mid plrrne lVuidorJader", I{en 147 mid 11'uldcr-fieder. 3b Cp. freqtnnf wundra (}msfela (or worn) in Grain-Kd.|$,ar, 4a Aw lPB, BmJ 108, Soi 25'j,; PPs 53, 4, 70, 18, 20, 71, 1g73,17, ?8, lef .teg.,'PsFr 5,1,?,87,89, 19 Cad.8.Ininflectedcasesnotc:gen.sing.cteeDryhtnes Brb 16, trf en 1"9i 6ean Dryhtnes Gcn 7, 1885; C&r 396, 711; Phn 600; PPs S7, I9, 68, 2,9; dat. sing" *6urn Dryhtne Bwf 9798, Jdg II 37i 9mP 26; acc. sing. 6ene DryhterPPs 55, g, 85, L, 5, 7; 66an Dr.yhten fru;f 1692, 1779, ?830. 4b BwJ 2401:, Rdl 3, 59 6onstelle; XS, ilg ord onstealdon. 5a Gen1'Lg,I{6r *rest sc6p;.&{sr 20,53 *rest gese6peAza 128 pet *r gesc6p; also OrIf 38 Hwct, on frSrnle sesc6p; PlLr 84 36 hit on {rym},sesc6p; Gen\9tV?hAH.A Adom sc6p. 5b Cen?,472; Chr 937, Ord 99(-o); Runl1; cp. furthedr5'1r1u bearnum G*z 993, &f m 228, Par 25, Sie 1103(-a); h*le6e bearnum Dan 898, Xf.


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Beil,e's Story af Ced,man 631554, PPs l35n ?, 144, 11; nipla bearnum Gcn LlSs{-g.), tqg4, Rdl97,6{-a), Bu! r005(-c),Men 196, Run 9Y, FPs 58, 5(-e).6a ITo supporting evidence. 6b Cp. Grein-Kohler for frcguent h6,li5 Dryhten and Cftrtll7 milde Sceppend. 7a. Dan 636 st6d middan-5eard; Gm 986 pes middan-:eard, l5S4eall |es rniddan-5eard; fie 521 pet h6 middan-5eard; Rdl gl, r Is pes middan-5eard;W'an 89 Swi |es middan-3eard. Cp. frequeut adv- gen. middan-5eardes, forming an.4*verse, e.g., &r 136, 1206, 13?8, and other poems .7a Gen ?758, 9g96. 8a see sa, above.Bb cp. Gen 469, s2s eefter libban; Bud lg, efter cenned, gr3l efter wurde; Anil rB9, Jwl19? after weot'dan; Rdl 39,23 *Iter gangep. ga No supporting evidence. gb Gen 5, 116,1S0,1?3,852,904, 1359,14??; Chr 1379;JudSof; Pps 68, 14,69,6, g5, 17.

2. magoum, bede's story of caedman the case history of an anglo-saxon

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