Talk:Cædmon's Hymn

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This article really should be a redirect to Cædmon which contains a full treatment of the poem. Anglo-Saxon literature also has summary information on it. So we have various information spread across three articles. I suggest the Cædmon article as the main source because it is the most complete and its better to aggregate if possible. Stbalbach 8 July 2005 12:30 (UTC)

Regarding the claim about paganism in the poem: it is simply not PoV to eliminate this reference--and very much PoV to include it. That Frea is the descendent of a Germanic word referring to secular lord in Pre-Christian times is very well known. Indeed there is a gigantic book on specifically the topic by D.H. Green which covers the term in ALL Germanic languages. In Old English, however, secular lordship terms are VERY thoroughly christianised. Drihten (also = lord in a secular sense) is almost exclusively used for Christian lord in OE; Frea as well. I don't have the stats in front of me but it is 1000s to 1. As Green shows, moreover, there is some evidence that Frea was avoided as Pagan in Gothic: wulfilla doesn't use the term in his translation of the Bible; the fact that is not avoided in Christian contexts in Anglo-Saxon contexts--indeed they seem to have liked using the word--suggests there is no real vestigal paganism here.

Finally, the claim that frea is some hidden or vestigal survival of paganism is nonsensical in any informed reading of the text: a true pagan frea would not be the beginning of all things; and there is no textual evidence whatsoever to suggest that Caedmon's Hymn is a Christianised version of an earlier pagan text. If you want to see real debate on the relationship of pagan past and christian present in Old English, look at the Dream of the Rood or even Beowulf: there the question of L/lord really is at issue.

The person who started this entry asked some time ago for patience while he or she developed the idea. Since then no development has taken place. The idea that the poem contains hidden paganism is very much non-mainstream and should be marked as such. Since the idea apparently can't be developed past the citation of this book--a scholarly unusual one at that--the reference should be removed or properly contextualised. It is extremely misleading.

-Dan O'Donnell

P.S. I also strongly think that this entry should be rolled into the Caedmon one.


 * I agree. It looks to me like someone forked the article to highlite a non-mainstream view. We allready have an article that covers this poem and does so very well, this is a fork which is against policy. --Stbalbach 05:59, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

The article is still in rather bad shape, and a merger into Cædmon is still advisable. The article suited for a discussion of formerly pagan titles applied to God after Christanisation would be Names of God in Old English poetry. --dab (𒁳) 17:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Line-by-line translation is misleading
The translation leaves a lot to be desired. Some of the lines don't even line up with the text they're supposedly translating. Also, some of the translation is not great. For example:

"Nū scylun hergan hefaenrīcaes Uard" translates as "Now [we] must honour the guardian of heaven"

Surely a better translation would be "Now [we] shall honor the heavenly kingdom's ward". This allows the roots of the words "shall and "ward" to show, and brings the full meaning of hefaenrīcaes (heaven-kingdom), and it doesn't change the meaning at all. Better still might be "Now shall we honor the heavenly kingdom's ward", which makes it sound older, but still preserves the meaning, although some might (due to the archaic word order) assume it's a question. Ianbrettcooper (talk) 11:34, 26 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi there Byrhtnoth Byrhtelmes Beorn: I can see what you're trying to do with your edits to the literal translation of Cædmon's Hymn, but I think we need to make sure that the translation does make sense in modern English and conveys the meaning of the original. If you just try to use only modern English words that are derived from the Old English ones, you can distort the sense of the Old English text, because the meanings of the words have changed over time; and if you try to use only the same word-order, the sentences don't always make any sense.


 * 1) Reich is a German word, not an English one, and is mostly associated in English with the Third Reich, which makes it even less suitable as a rendering of -ricaes
 * 2) ward in English today normally means a person who is looked after by someone else, not the guardian themselves
 * 3) 'mind-think' strikes me as scarcely intelligible as a rendering of modgidanc: surely 'mind-thought' is better?
 * 4) you've removed the syntactic relationships between the words in suē hē uundra gihwaes ... ōr āstelidæ, which should mean 'because he established the origin of each thing'; your rendering 'so he wonder each ... origin established' doesn't make grammatical sense
 * 5) Old English fold doesn't mean the same as fold in Modern English.
 * For now, I'm going to revert your edits but am happy to discuss changes to the old translation that might be productive. If you think readers want a word-by-word understanding, maybe we would be better off adding a glossary, like in the article for Exeter Book Riddle 47? Alarichall (talk) 16:06, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Good morning Alarichall,

My reasoning behind this style of translation in this context is that for the average browser of Wikipedia, a MnE translation such as this doesn't necessarily leave them with the right impression of the *language* of the poem. Words like 'modegethanc' and 'weard' are done little justice with the translations 'thoughts' and 'protector'. Surely 'ward' is understandable enough to most modern readers (I for one first learned the word to mean protection playing Warhammer Fantasy as a child) and would you not agree that fold is a poetic way of referring to the land? I have heard it used as such before. At the very least, I think that the compound words like 'heofonrices' should be translated to mean something like 'heaven-kingdom' to demonstrate the OE style of poetry, and I think we shouldn't move clauses around where they don't belong as to not confuse someone who is trying to read this translation in order to get an idea of what words mean what. It is far less egregious, in my opinion, to have some somewhat unintelligible grammar, than to alter the syntax of the poem. But, I am new to this Wikipedia stuff, and if you think I am taking the wrong angle, I will defer to your judgement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Byrhtnoth Byrhtelmes Beorn (talk • contribs) 16:47, 28 November 2021 (UTC)


 * Welcome to Wikipedia! I'm glad you've started contributing and hope you find lots that you can contribute. Add Old English words to Wiktionary might also be a good passtime if that's you're sort of thing. I think the compounds idea would work fine, and agree that using them would help reflect the style of the poetry -- as long as we translate words with modern English words that clearly communicate the sense of the OE words. So how about hefaenrīcaes: heaven-kingdom's; mōdgidanc: mind-conception; Uuldurfadur: glory-father? Alarichall (talk) 22:32, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Alarichall,
 * 1) What about heaven-reach for heofonrice? I seem to have some vague memory of reach being a legitimate way to refer to an eorldom.
 * 2) Are you dead set on not using ward for weard?
 * 3) For metudæs maecti, could we translate that as 'the architect's might' instead of 'the might of the architect' just to clarify word order?
 * 4) Lastly, how would you feel about preserving the order of the last 3 lines? To read something like:

Then Middle-earth, mankinds ward (or protector)

eternal Lord, after titled (or appointed)

the land for men, the Lord almighty.

I would argue that is fairly understandable, and is a much more loyal translation. Would you disagree?