Studies in Philology

Bede's story of Cædmon focuses on the reception of Cædmon and his Hymn as much as it does on the poet's inspiration and compositions. Focusing on Cædmon's successive audiences as well as the Hymn provides us with new perspectives on both the Hymn and its reception. The emphasis on issues of competence and performance at the core of the story of Cædmon closely resembles the concerns of modern ethnopoetics and confirms that Bede is indeed presenting a historical account of the reception of a new poet by his local community. The omission of the subject we in line 1a is best explained by the physical presence of both the poet and his audience, since subject pronouns are most likely to be omitted by speakers addressing their audience, and provides further confirmation of the authenticity of the Hymn. Following hints provided by Bede and other early eighth-century sources, we can trace likely avenues for the transmission of the story of Cædmon from Whitby to Bede. It is likely that he learned of both the story and the Hymn through informants such as Acca and John of Beverley who, as bishops of Hexham, were ordinands of Wearmouth-Jarrow. Such a transmission implies that he and other members of his monastic community learned of the Hymn long before he composed his history and that the Old English version of the Hymn in the margins of early manuscripts of the Historia was recorded by a person familiar with the Hymn and was not a back-translation of Bede's Latin paraphrase.