Cædmon's Hymn
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Cædmon's Hymn is a short Old English poem attributed to Cædmon, a supposedly illiterate and unmusical cow-herder who was, according to the Northumbrian monk Bede, miraculously empowered to sing in hon
Folio 129r of the early eleventh-century Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 43, showing a page of Bede's Latin text, with Cædmon's Hymn added in the lower margin
Bede's Death Song
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Bede's Death Song is the editorial name given to a five-line Old English poem, supposedly the final words of the Venerable Bede. It is, by far, the Old English poem that survives in the largest number
Cædmon's Hymn
…but not the original poem. The poem is also the Old English poem attested in the second largest number of known manuscripts — twenty-three — after Bede's Death Song. These are all manuscripts of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. These manuscripts show significant variation in the form of the text…
Bede's tomb in Durham Cathedral