Poetic inspiration and prosaic translation

Bede’s account of the miraculous poetic inspiration of the illiterate cowherd Caedmon (Historia ecclesiastica 4:22 [24]) is one of the best- known stories from Anglo-Saxon England, ¹ and the brief Old English poem now known as Cœdmon’s Hymn has offered generations of scholars the opportunity for a bewildering number of observations and speculations. ² Alongside more general discussions or detailed comments on the syntax or vocabulary of the episode or the Hymn, ³ academic attention has focused in turn on two topics: first, the large number of analogues, widely dispersed in time and place, for the tale itself, ⁴ and, second, the particular implications of the formulaic phrasing to be observed in Cœdmon’s Hymn. ⁵ Such concerns can be characterised by the twin desire on the one hand to consider Cœdmon’s Hymn in its vernacular context, and on the other to assess Bede’s account with respect to wider fields of literature and legend beyond Anglo-Saxon England. Here I hope to illustrate the ways in which the Hymn and Bede’s story of Cædmon’s inspiration both represent a blending of traditions, both native and imported, of precisely the sort that is the hallmark of Anglo-Saxon culture.