There are many books that discuss Bede and Cædmon.

The precise connections between the groups are much debated, but all scholars agree that Magdalen’s manuscript is from the West Saxon ylda group of 6 or 7 surviving versions, dating to the 11th or 12th centuries or later.

The mixture of protogothic bookhand and insular miniscule can be clearly seen as it mixes several different forms of some letters, such as ‘g’ (compare the 3rd, 5th, and 8th lines), ‘d’ (compare the rounded ascender in the 2nd line with the straight one in the 3rd line), and ‘r’ (in a short form in the first four lines but with a descender in the 5th line).Īll of the 21 surviving copies of this hymn are subtly different, but they can be grouped into a number of distinct recensions, with two groups believed to be Northumbrian whilst two or three others are from Wessex. It also uses the Tironian nota ⁊ (in line 3, looking more like a ‘y’) to mean ‘and’. Note that it uses three letters from the Old English alphabet that no longer survive: wynn (ƿ, used extensively including at the start of the 2nd word) to represent a ‘w’ sound thorn (þ, in the 3rd line) to represent a ‘th’ sound and aesc (æ, used fairly frequently including in the 4th line and as Æ in the 10th line) for a sound between ‘a’ and ‘e’. Interestingly, the Old English poem seems to have been copied out by the scribe writing the rest of the text, but in a deliberately different style of hand, blending protogothic bookhand, in which the rest of the book is written, with older insular minuscule features. The start of both versions are marked by three dots as a signe-de-renvoi (sign of return). MS.Lat.105, on folio 99 recto, the hymn in Latin is halfway down the left-hand column, whilst the hymn in Old English has been written in the right-hand margin, starting at the same height on the page. However, 21 surviving medieval copies contain an Old English version of the text: either because the whole book has been translated into Old English (as is the case for the so-called Alfredian text from Wessex) or because the hymn has been added in Old English. Bede wrote his history in Latin, including translating Cædmon’s hymn from its original Old English into Latin.

Venerable bede ecclesiastical history