Orality and the Developing Text of Caedmon's Hymn

The modern editorial practice of printing Old English poetry one verse to a line with a distinct separation between half-lines distracts attention from a well-known and important fact, that Old English poetry is copied without exception in long lines across the writing space. ¹ Normal scribal practice does not distinguish verses, reserving capitals and points for major divisions of a work. ² In manuscripts of Latin poetry, however, quite another practice holds. Latin verses copied in England after the eighth century are regularly transmitted in a format familiar to modern readers: verses are set out one to a line of writing, capitals begin each line, and often some sort of pointing marks the end of each verse. The regularity of this distinction in copying practice and the difference in the nature and level of the graphic conventions used for verse in the two languages imply that such scribal practice was deliberate and was useful and significant for contemporary readers.